Puppies Redux: AU 701 We'll Always Have Paris
by Jedi's Pal
Summary: This is a REPOSTING from our shipper wish fulfilment series that changes up the Season Seven premiere starting with the Season Six Finale. This is a REPOSTING of "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies" (Chapters 1-3) and "Reconnecting" (Chapters 1, 12 & 13), combining together those T and M rated stories so it can be read in one comprehensive continuous storyline for the 7.01 AU.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** _This is the first reposting of our series of ultimate shipper wish fulfilment AU's based on Jeffrey Donovan's comments that the fans want our favorite couple to tie the knot and have violent babies. Apologies for not getting this posted on Saturday as originally intended... Loads of technical issues with Fan Fiction and the lot, but all sorted out now :)_

 _This is the first part of the 7.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 1 in "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies."_ _This is in response to several comments that the original formats for these two series were confusing to follow. T_ _hank you to all the wonderful Burners out there. We deeply appreciated all the reads, reviews, favorites, follows and total enthusiasm for this series when it originally posted._

 _Any new chapters of this AU for 7.01 will continue to be posted in the_ ** _Reconnecting_** _story first and then here. No need to change any of your story alerts. First up, a better version of Season Seven, a season which really needed a rewrite!_

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 **7.01 AU - We'll Always Have Paris - Part 1**

 _An alternate for Season Seven and beyond following on from 6.18 – Game Change_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Paris, France 2012_

Going to Milan had been a mistake.

 _And not the first one,_ she thought sardonically as she sat under the clouds and the bright red canopy of the Castel Café on Avenue de Suffren near the Eiffel Tower. The drinks were over priced, the food and the service spotty and the only real thing it had to recommend it was the crowd and the visibility of the overhang. If she wasn't convinced that the source of her contact was genuine, she would have assumed she was being set up for a hit. Not that she cared much if she had in fact been targeted.

 _Not the first time for that, either,_ she noted as she picked at her day-old croissant, trying vainly to find anything that vaguely resembled an appetite. Her body was in full rebellion. The months she'd spent in prison and on the run, the weeks spent trapped in a secret CIA holding cell, the crushing blow of realizing that he had truly gone this time and the jet lag that accompanied going from EDT to GMT and beyond had left her weak and weary. She slept, she cried, she cried, she slept, she drank massive amounts of water, she cried some more, she slept until her bladder woke her up and forced marched her to the bathroom and then she cried and slept and drank some more with a generous bit of sniffling thrown in for good measure, and then the cylce repeated itself as her days had become a merciful blur.

Telling Dani Pearce to go back home might have been a mistake too, she decided as the immense sorrow threatened to engulf her again. Jesse had accompanied her to Greece, where she had had a reunion of sorts with her family, albeit a few members at a time. The Glenanne clan could hardly go on holiday all at once without attracting attention. It was a time of catching up, consoling and exchanging the bank account numbers necessary for her survival. She was happy that Seamus had come first. Her brother's wife Isabelle was the closest thing to a female friend she had in the world outside of Dani.

That thought struck her as funny and she laughed out loud, the harsh noise sounding very foreign to her own ears. Yes, she had resented Michael's new handler. She had been very fond of Max before he had been murdered and the spy was either being coy or oblivious by not mentioning that Agent Pearce was a woman. In his case, oblivious was probably the right answer. But she appreciated what the woman had done to help get her out of prison and she appreciated everything Kimberly Danielle Pearce had done for her even before that time. Back then, working with Pearce had given her hope that maybe, just maybe, this whole moving in with a reinstated Michael _and_ living with his job at the CIA would work.

But hope deferred makes the heart sick and there was nothing worse than the death of a dream.

At least Jesse Porter was getting to live his dream and she was friend enough not to begrudge him that. He had met up with Dani in Greece to escort her back from her exile in Mumbai. But Fiona had politely declined to join them on their trip to Cairo before returning home to the United States. She knew too many people in Cairo and, although Seamus was keen to have her refocus quickly and go back to work, she just couldn't do it. Not only was it too soon, but her traveling companions were a problem for her.

The truth was, she couldn't stand to be around Jesse and Dani together, any more than she could Sam and Elsa. There'd been a reason she had fled their company in Miami. There was only so much giddy mated-pair happiness her stomach could take. As bad as that was, Madeline's anguish had been worse.

The grief and guilt had been a horrific combination and Fi was ashamed to admit that she'd been grateful when Michael's mother had gone to stay with her sister Jill out of state. She'd been equally grateful to have Jesse sitting next to her while she slept almost the entire sixteen hour flight over the Atlantic. He had laid his long limb around her small shoulders and, oddly enough, she had quietly and gratefully accepted the comfort because _she had needed it so damned much._

There was no longer anything vaguely romantic in their interactions now, hadn't been for years. The tall younger man was a brother, as surely as Sean was. It had been Jesse's presence at her side that had allowed her to relax enough to get some serious rest. Still, he and Dani deserved their happiness, so Fi had emphatically told both of them "to get out of her sight" with as much humor as she could muster.

But since then, she'd found herself alone with her memories and her tears and the dreams and the nightmares that invaded her mind whenever she closed her eyes for the briefest second. She rented the little villa in _Milano_ where they had spent two glorious weeks together back… when was it? Eight years ago was it? How had time gotten so fuzzy? It had been a disaster in the long run. Instead of invoking the pleasant memories of a secret rendezvous, she had cried until she'd gotten sick and then she was just ill.

It had gone well at first. She had managed to get into the spirit of things. Sweet reminiscences of him trying to surprise her in the tub, posing as room service with a bottle of champagne until he met the business end of her H&K, that surrounded her whilst Fiona had bathed that first night had made her think this might go well. Memories of eating various delicacies off of one another had flowed around her as she had settled into the bed that night, too. But as soon as sleep claimed her, she was back in Jed's house, on the run and running out of options once more. She knew taking his mom on the run had been worrying Michael, but what had almost happened to Sam had been completely tearing him apart.

It had frightened Fiona too, more than she cared to admit, hence the clinging to one another that night. Since Panama, their opportunities for privacy had been scattered and stress-filled. In seeking comfort, one or the other would initiate an embrace or a kiss and then, like hitting a detonator, that would grow progressively more passionate and desperate until they could barely take the time to pull their clothing away before they were locked in intimacy, the close personal contact as important as the euphoria.

She sniffed hard, trying to stem the flow of water from her red rimmed eyes, dabbing at them with her napkin. Giving the elderly couple at the next table a watery smile, she said, 'allergies' in French and took another sip of her tea, trying not to choke on it. Her second night in Milan she dreamed of what would be their last night together, the combination of the love making followed by a drug lord's assault team attack had been all too evocative of their time together in Ireland, and it had left her a sobbing mess.

Her third night in Milan, she dreamed of them driving the surveillance van containing the motorbike to the hospital while the others had taken the car, giving them a moment alone. She had slid into his lap before letting him exit the van, kissing him frantically which he returned in equal measure. "Take care," she had whispered before watching him walk away. That had been the last time she had seen him.

She had left Milan for Paris the next morning.

Normally thinking about explosions brought a spark to her eye and a song to her heart. But as the plane had climbed above the clouds, it had been all she could do to contain herself as she thought back on sitting behind those rusted barrels beside Mr. Porter watching Riley and her new drug cartel cronies, her assault rifle ready to defend Michael… and Bly… _God help her, how had she come to that?..._ where they were hidden away, gathering the evidence that would hopefully set them all free from this madness.

 _What was that?_ Jesse had asked as the place where the other pair was hidden had erupted into flames.

 _Oh, God…_ ripped from her lips as the cartel's guards rushed towards that part of the marina that was just out of their line of sight which was now billowing fire and smoke.

 _Fi, no, no, no, you can't. There's too many of them._

 _Let go!_ She'd been almost ready to shoot the younger man until he had finally gotten through to her.

 _There's too many of them! We gotta figure out what's going on…_ His words had pulled her back, but it had been a struggle not to rush the squad of heavily armed men to find out what had just happened.

 _If only they had!_ For while they were trying to make a plan, desperately calling Michael and getting no answer, the yacht had exploded in a colossal fireball which had knocked everyone to the ground and left them easy pickings for the government tactical team that swooped in and apprehended both of them.

After she had checked into the hotel in Paris, she had fallen into an fatigued and mercifully dreamless sleep that first night, but had awoken to the bleak reality that she had no idea what she was going to do.

Her senses hadn't dulled so much that she'd missed the fact she'd been under surveillance ever since she'd left Greece. But it didn't surprise her much that _some damned government somewhere_ was tracking her movements. It had been like that since she'd been a teenager. The Irish woman would have wished them all to hell, except she wanted to get away from them, not have them join her there.

Then she'd gotten a contact from a trusted source, instructing her to meet with someone who had what she needed. She smiled faintly and swiped at another tear that refused to remain contained. _Sam Axe, trusted source._ When she had launched a beer bottle at him all those years ago, she would have never put those two phrases together. They had come such a long way since it had been her and Sam and Michael against the world, robbing the rich thieves and giving it back to those who'd been victimized.

 _An' pursuing Michael's fecking burn notice, o' course!_

 _Congratulations, Michael,_ she thought bitterly, toasting him with her dreadful weak tea. _Ya got 'em all. Ya dinnae stop until they war all in tha ground, Cowan, Carla, Card, Riley and fecking Anson Fullerton._

She swallowed hard against the burn in her throat and willed her eyes to remain clear. _Stay angry,_ she counseled. Staying mad at him was the key to not collapsing in a blubbering heap in the public eye.

 _Was it worth it, Michael? Does that help you where you are now? Does it help any of us?_ In truth, it _had_ helped the rest of them in the end. But the cost was too high to seem much like a victory. Still, Fi had to admit that she did take a perverse pride in being able to claim Carla and Dead Larry on _her_ hit list.

 _Bloody frogs, coudnae make a proper cup o' tea ta save thar lives_ , she groused, switching back to her native tongue as she stared at the colorful throng before her, Irish, English and French mixing together in her head yet again. She wasn't sure what to expect, but Sam had said she'd know it when she saw it.

Last night had been one of the worst. She might physically have been in the Hotel de Sers on Avenue Pierre with its gracious decor, but her mind and her heart were still trapped in that sterile holding cell.

 _She had asked, demanded and pleaded to know where he was, whether he was dead or alive. For weeks they had asked her questions, for hours on end every day, all of which she had answered truthfully over and over, but no one had ever answer her two questions: Where were her friends? Where was Michael?_

And when she finally had gotten her answer, she wished she'd never asked.

 _She was sitting at the end of a table at the end of her rope._ _When the door opened and Jason Bly stepped through holding that heavy cardboard folder, she had barked a nasty laugh before jerking on the cuffs._

 _The CSS Agent had made quite the show of opening the folder carefully before pulling out several sheets._

" _Again? Is that really the best you've got, Agent Bly?"_

" _I appreciate the irony of situation, Ms Glenanne, I truly do. Please know that when Michael saved my life, he saved all of your lives as well by preserving the evidence that demonstrated Olivia Riley's guilt."_

 _He had slid the sheets across the table to her. There'd been something different about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it. His typical sarcasm had been tempered with an almost stoic seriousness._

" _At least you made the effort to get the eye color right this time," she'd snarked as she flipped through the autopsy report. It was the photos that had given her pause. The sedan had clearly been burned from the inside by a device similar to one that she had used herself during her time undercover in the RIRA._

" _Michael," Bly had paused and swallowed. That'd gotten her attention. The CSS agent had always been in control. "Michael pushed me and the evidence out of the car first and then tried to get rid of the…"_

" _Oh, please," she had countered flatly, though her heart had started beating faster. "You want me to believe he sacrificed himself to save you?"_

" _No, Fiona, to save you. To save all of you. If I had died, if the evidence we have on Olivia Riley had gone up in flames, all of your friends would be sitting in a maximum security dark prision right now with no hope of ever seeing the sun and, please believe me when I tell you this, you would have been sharing a black bag flight with Arthur Meyers back to Britain right now if it hadn't been for what Michael did."_

 _She'd wanted to believe the counter surveilliance service trained their agents that well in spycraft, but she couldn't quite make herself. She had gone through the reports, the photograhs, the DNA analysis…_

Back at the hotel last night, she hadn't made it to the toilet in time, but at least the bidet had kept her from embarressing herself completely. She had stripped off her sodden clothes and crawled into the shower. She wasn't sure how long she had spent curled up in a ball, rocking and weeping at the bottom of the tub. But she knew the water had gotten cold and that fact made her sob all the more, as she had remembered all the times they had spent making love in that old fashioned, claw-footed tub squeezed in that tiny little bathroom in the loft until the hot water had run out. She squeezed her eyes shut now. Sitting in that tourist trap of a café, she'd had to draw on all her resources to pull herself back together.

"Ya look like ya could use a bit o' good news thar."

The only thing that kept her from drawing her weapon in public and shooting the man who had come up from behind was that she recognized his voice. For one heart stopping second, the Irish lilt had opened up a well spring of possibilities and then, just that fast, they had collapsed into nothing. But curiousity saved her from herself on several counts as she turned to the large, solidly built son of Marcus Dwyer.

"Sit down then, befer someone shoots ya," she offered, indicating the seat next to her. She leaned towards him and spoke soft and low. "Whot ar' ya doing here, Ryan? I thought ya war in New York."

"Aye, we war, but thot nasty business wit' Greyson Miller has made times hard on all o' us," he said, a quiet edge of accusation in his statement. "Pa thought it better if we came back ta Ireland fer a bit."

Being reminded of what the CIA had manipulated her into doing in order to secure her release from prison didn't help her mood any, but she tried not to show it. Fi plastered a weak smile onto her face.

"Whot are ya doin' in Paris then? Holiday?"

"Thar's no holidays in this business, ya know thot," Ryan said with a slight smile of his own. Marcus' eldest was the spitting image of his father and the most trusted of his sons. "I wa' meant ta be meetin' wit' an old friend o' yars when I ran into another old chum from yar past. He asked me ta give ya this."

The younger man slid a burner phone under the tablecloth and into her waiting hands.

"Twas good ta see a friendly face fram home," he said, rising as the cell vibrated silently in her palm, indicating there was a text. "But I've other business ta tend ta and I'm thinking ya have as well."

And with that, the Irishman was gone. She didn't waste any time pulling up the incoming message.

 _Greetings from Stockholm_ , it read _._

Her breath caught in her throat and her heart almost skipped a beat. _See you in Stockholm_ had been code for _I'm going on a mission and, if I don't come back, I'll see you on the other side._ It meant you were on a suicide mission and you didn't want anyone else following you through death's door. You finished the job or the job finished you, but you did it by yourself. After the devastating death of her dream of being with the only man she had ever truly loved, could she dare allow herself to hope?

 _Rose's Garden,_ came the next message _._

She was on her feet in an instant; her food and beverage abandoned as she sought out the nearest taxi to take her to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and the spot where Sean's wife had once told her she'd have liked to build a garden. There were only three people in the world who knew about that. She and Michael McBride had been playing cards with Sean and his wife one evening as Rosanne had talked about the belated honeymoon Sean had taken her on following the birth of Sian, their first child.

As she stood at the curbside, her eyes scanning the crowded streets for an open cab, a limo slowly pulled in front of her and stopped, blocking traffic while the passenger window began its lazy descent.

"This _is_ an unexpected pleasure. It's good to see you again, Fiona."

"Armand…" she almost stammered. "What are—"

"Well, that's a question I should be asking you, I think. I _do_ have a few houses here afterall." The door to the gleaming black stretch sedan was flung open. "Do you need a ride perhaps?"

The phone in her purse was buzzing like an angry hornet, but she couldn't pull it out and look at it at just that moment. She had worked with Armand Andreani on and off for over two decades. If he wanted her dead, he'd had plenty of opportunity to arrange that. For some reason, the French merchant of war had allowed her to walk in and out of his life with no repercussion of any kind, save to her battered soul.

As she slid into the seat he had abandoned the moment before, she wondered what the consequences would be this time. He smiled at her, making no secret of running an appreciative eye over her frame.

"Avenue des Champs-Élysées, je vais vous dire où arrêter," she advised the driver.

"Hmm, I've missed hearing that," Mr. Andreani responded with a nod to the man up front to proceed. "You're beautiful as always, Fiona, though it would seem life has been somewhat unkind of late."

"C'est la vie." She shrugged. "You look well."

He smiled alittle wider at that. "I try, of course. What brings you to Paris? Business, pleasure, both?"

"Business, at the moment," she lied and then put two and two together. "You're meant to have a meeting with Ryan Dwyer, aren't you?"

"As you obviously know the answer, then yes. Marcus Dwyer was quite eager to work with me and quite informative. I understand there was some rather nasty business back in Miami. Prison, international man hunts, rogue agents… Your trip to America doesn't seem to have turned out as you planned. Do you need something more than a ride? You know me—always a friend to those in need."

Yes, she knew him all too well. His help was guaranteed, as were the strings that always came attached.

"You know _me_ ," she returned with false bravado. "I can handle meself. Permettez-moi de là-bas," she said to the driver, pointing down another block to a spot proximate to L'Arc de Triomphe.

"Fiona, I would never question _your_ skills. However, you might be unaware that certain people with your skill set have been making threats. It might not be safe to take a walk today, particularly here."

"Really? _Sounds like fun_. Maybe I'll send the French government a bill for disarming whatever device I happen to come across." She knew where this was going and she had no intention of playing along. "Laissez-moi sortir," she commanded when the sedan started to drive past her destination.

She saw the driver's eyes in the rear view mirror flick to his employer's, who nodded his assent. "If you're sure there's nothing else I can help you with…?" Armand let the question linger.

"Not today," she assured him as the black limousine pulled slowly alongside the curb. She climbed out of the vehicle and, after she had shut the door, he lowered the window once more.

"Jusqu'à la prochaine fois, mon cheri. If anything should happen, remember I'm just a phone call away."

"Merci and au revoir, Armand." She turned quickly from the car, not even looking back, and pulled the cell from her designer purse. The street was crowded with tourists, motorists, Police Nationale and covert operatives of the National Gendarmerie, all of whom she ignored, pushing past to her endpoint.

She smiled at the string of coded text messages as she scrolled through them. One advising her not to get in the vehicle, the next asking if she was alright, yet another emphasizing the need to arrive quickly at the meeting point, one more reminding her to relax and go with it, no matter what happened.

And then finally….

 _Be brave, little angel._

She just let her legs collapse under her, trying to ensure that she would land in a heap and not damage herself too badly when she hit the rusted grate and still have it look convincing. She heard a mechanism engage somewhere off to her left as well as below her feet. What actually happened when she'd fallen towards the pavement was the metal grid she'd been standing upon had swung down and she'd been dropped into the darkness below the street. But two pairs of strong arms reached out to catch her.

As the duo righted her onto her feet and started to release her, the poor light of the service tunnel was simultaneously illuminated by the light of the titanic detonation above them and the shock wave caused them all to momentarily loose their footings. That was when she recognized them, the first man from Greece and then the twosome from Milan. They must have been tailing her since she'd left the US!

As she stamped down on the foot of the one behind, he grunted and shoved her towards his associate, who quickly took advantage of his superior size and enveloped Fiona in a tight grip. While the burly man ignored the blows and kicks that came his way, she struggled until the bite of needle stung her neck and everything went black. As they carried her limp form away, in the street above where the fireball had erupted, waves of panicked civilians and armed forces alike were scattering away from the explosion.

But to the naked eye observing what appeared to be a terrorist bombing on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, it seemed Fiona Glennane had died the same way that she had lived: in a fiery blaze of glory.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** _This is the second part of the 7.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 2 in "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies."_

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 **7.01 AU - We'll Always Have Paris - Part 2**

 _An alternate for Season Seven and beyond following on from 6.18 – Game Change_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Atlantic Ocean, undisclosed location 2012_

Victor Roshenko was normally a patient man, but today was not such a day.

Anton Yelchin had known the man for decades and yet rarely had he seen Victor this agitated, perhaps in the very beginning, when he had first met Magdalene's nephew during their early days in Afghanistan. But in all their time working together in the Motherland, Mr. Roshenko had always been the calm, confident colleague, despite the fact Anton had been older and more experienced.

Conversely, watching the younger man pace the private deck of the French-made Couach 5000 FLY luxury yacht while they waited for the doctor to return, Mr. Roshenko reminded Anton more and more of his aunt. The tall, solidly built blonde had been known wear trenches in the dirt floors of their tents on particularly stressful missions in those days long ago of their first assignments.

It was because of Victor's aunt that Mr. Yelchin was alive today and sitting on such a fine vessel. He owed his life and his prosperity to Magdalene Polzin many times over and, after her death, to her nephew as well. It was a great favor that the dark haired man had asked of him, new identity papers for himself and his new bride, the widow of a high ranking member of the _Unione Corse_.

Noting that Victor was now running his hand through his long black hair as he made the circuit, the older man wondered if perchance his friend was not the reason she was a widow now. It had been quite plain that this man was madly in the love with the woman, no matter how he had tried to hide it when he'd come to Anton's private ducha in the Ukrainian woods to ask for his assistance.

"You are going to wear out this fine decking soon," the son of a Russian colonel and the Afghani translator advised. Chuckling, he added, "Magdalene would have been so proud of you."

That brought Victor's journey to a halt momentarily. He consulted his watch again. "This is taking too long," he accused. "I need answers."

This time, he smiled broadly and offered no comment. When they'd been deep in the underbelly of the City of Lights, awaiting the arrival of his most precious cargo, the man had been equally edgy.

 _Of all the spaces that composed the Parisian underground, the canals and reservoirs, crypts and bank vaults, wine cellars and the carriers —the old limestone quarries that fan out in a deep and intricate web, these tunnels were the most secret. Not even the cataphiles knew of their existence._

 _It had been very dark in this poorly illuminated port, but that had been the point. His tightly wound companion had gone to great lengths to convince the world he was dead and that his new wife was now so as well. It would be of little use if someone were to see him out in the open at this moment._

 _It made Anton smile inside seeing the normally unflappable operative marching in circles on the ancient stone dock next to the boat that would take them through a secret entrance from that unseen waterway that lay under the streets of Paris above onto the River Sienne. He didn't dare smile outwardly where Comrade Roshenko could see him before he knew the mission was done._

 _Victor_ had _actually smiled when Mr. Yelchin had handed him the new documents that would allow Mikhal and Josephine Zolnerowich to board the large transatlantic yacht awaiting them just offshore opposite where the mouth of the Sienne emptied into the ocean. Anton didn't know where the happy couple was going settle once they'd departed from the coast of France, nor did he want to. He suspected it would be the last time he saw his long-time associate or his private yacht._

 _And he was fine with that, assuming that Victor didn't kill someone before they got aboard. Anton had begun to worry himself at that point. They needed to be out of the tunnels while it was low tide or they would be trapped there for another twelve hours, far too much time that could result in anxiety induced mayhem._

 _So it was probably fortuitous for everyone involved that Mr. Roschenko had just gone back down onto the boat when the two Arabic mercenaries finally had arrived carrying the unconscious woman between them._

" _Give her to me!" he'd hissed, his tone one of barely controlled violence as they had handed their burden down to him on the aft deck and he'd had a look at all the cuts and scrapes. "What did you do to her?" he'd demanded, cradling the insensible form to his chest and seething._

 _Mr. Yelchin was fairly certain Victor would have beaten all of them senseless right about then if it hadn't been for the limp load already in his arms. His mood did not improve when Anton informed his associate that she had fought with his men and the pair had administered propofol to aid in her silent transportation through the narrow stone passageways of the underground._

"When is this doctor of yours going to—"

The woman in question answered the query by emerging out of the semi-circular staircase from the lower decks to the second highest deck of the _Magda_ , one surrounded by highly polished one-way glass that did not impede the view of the Atlantic, but kept prying eyes from viewing its occupants. The ten member crew owed Anton Yelchin the same loyalty that he owed to Victor.

"Julia Basheer at your service, Mr. Roshenko. Anton has told me much about you."

Victor threw a deathly glare at Mr. Yelchin before turning back to the doctor. "How much?"

"Enough to understand your impatience with those who do not respect your need for privacy and loyalty," she answered him. "Rest assured, Mr. Roshenko, Anton would not have called me if I could not be trusted to handle this matter with competency and discretion."

The younger man's lips disappeared into his full black beard as he bit his lips together and nodded.

"Very well then," the beautiful Arabic woman continued. "Your wife is still unconscious and was having some difficulty breathing due to the aesthetic, but I am administering oxygen and expect she will awaken shortly. Her other injuries are minor cuts and abrasions. However…."

" _However?_ " Victor growled, tossing daggers with his intense blue eyes at his long-time asset.

"I wish to speak of this with you privately, Mr. Roshenko. It is a delicate matter."

The dark haired man looked between his two allies, unsure as always who he could trust.

"Do not concern yourself, my friend. I would not have allowed any harm to come to your beloved. I'm sure whatever the good doctor has to say, you will not be displeased."

()()()

"Fiona, Fi? I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"

 _Yer always sorry fer sommit…stop apologizin'_

"I didn't know…Fiona, I'm sorry, I didn't know…"

 _Dinnae I jus' tell ya ta stop apologizin' already…?._

"Fi, can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?"

 _I hear ya fine, am tired… lemme alone…._

"Fiona, please, just open your eyes…please?"

 _If I open me eyes, will ya shut it? Yer not real, not here… lemme sleep… am tired… so damned tired…._

Warmth surrounded her face… warm rough hands and the warm breath of someone too close to her personal space boundaries. Then something moist but also scratchy pressed against her forehead. Was she back in Ireland? The voice pleading with her didn't sound Irish. Had Sean hired someone to...

Everything was a blur…there was a mass of long, curly jet black hair and a full beard that framed dark, deeply tanned features. As the face slowly came into focus, she realized that whoever had clearly been somewhere very dry… That someone moved toward her again and this time laid claim to her lips, gently pressing against them in a chaste kiss... well almost, but not quite.

She moaned and closed her eyes tightly. The hands slid away from her face and pressed against various parts of her form. The touch was pleasant and assessing injuries, not intending to harm… It reminded her of the way she had checked over Michael's bruised and battered body at that cheap motel room way back when….

"Are you in pain?" A hand lingered over her abdomen, carressing not probing, while another sought out one of her small and frail looking ones, applying only a slight amount of pressure.

 _Are ya joking?_ Her head was pounding and her throat was raw. The back of her neck was sore and she knew she'd been roughed up, albeit by someone trying not to hurt her and failing. She opened her all too heavy eyelids with an effort. There was a pair of familiar blue eyes staring back at her amidst all the hair and whiskers, bright with unshod tears, and below them a tight white toothy smile.

It took all her concentration, but she managed to make a fist and send it in the general direction of his jaw. Luckily for him, she had telegraphed her intention well in advance of her attack and he dodged it. He didn't wait for a second swing. He scooted up the wide bed and pulled her up into his arms, wrapping her now trembling torso into a tight embrace, cradling the back of her head with one hand and nestling it in between his shoulder and his chin. Her arms were pinned and she let them lie lifeless at her sides. _This man holding her, he couldn't really be there, could he?._

"Ya bastid…" was all she got out before all the fight went out of her in a shaky exhalation of breath and the omnipresent water works began to flow once more. She thought absently about how odd the scrape of his facial hair felt against her skin as she drew in another lungful of air with a huge sniffle. The man embracing was thinner than she remembered, his muscles harder, too.

"I am, aren't I?" he agreed as he held her close, pressing tiny kisses to the top of her head as she soaked his shirt with salt water. "It's alright. Ya go on then and have a good cry," came the instructions in the lyrical intonations of Michael McBride's voice. "It's all over now. Yer safe now. Ya both are. I promise."

She didn't question where he'd been or what he'd been doing. She didn't ask what he meant by both. She didn't ask when he'd be leaving again or for how long he'd be gone this time. She didn't do anything but let that well spring of grief, stress and pain, decades in the making, burst open and flow forth. She had been trying to hold it in, trying to keep it together, and failing miserably. So she decided to just let it out. He felt real, _this felt real_ , and, if she was dreaming, then _damn anyone_ who'd tried to wake her up.

At some point, he joined her, his own shaking taking up where hers finally had ceased, his own silent sobs leaving tracks on her forehead and cheeks, her own arms wrapping around his waist and then his back. He held onto her as if his life depended on it, because that's what it all came down to – his life dependent on her, unable and unwilling to let her go. Fiona could feel it in his trembling, his unspoken sorrows, in his own hot tears mingling with hers.

 _Could she, dare she let herself believe it?_

"It's over now," he whispered hoarsely against her hair. "No one is going to hurt you, I promise."

"Not even you?" She felt him flinch as she said it, but she had to know. "How long will you be—"

"Forever," he declared, his a voice a little stronger now. "Just like I promised you in Panama."

Her silence was her answer. She didn't dare hope… It would kill her to find him, after she thought she had lost him forever, only to lose him again. She felt nauseous just thinking about it.

"Fiona, look at me," he instructed, tilting his head and her chin so they had to make eye contact. "You said that morning on the beach that all you wanted was to be by my side," he swallowed thickly, still feeling the remembered sorrow from that morning over his brother's death. "In Panama, you said that you wanted it to be just us, the way it used to be, and then I promised I would get out, get out of—"

"All of it," she finished for him. "But after Grey, it was Card. And after Card, it was Riley. And then Bly—" her tone had grown progressively more despondent until she said that once hated name. "Bly said you died… but I didn't believe him. He tried to tell me you were dead once before… after the consulate bombing. He said you _died to save him and the evidence._ Then I saw the photos, I-"

She choked back a sob, remembering the terrible moment when she had finally thought him gone, no miraculous escapes, no last minute reprieves, and _she had died inside_. His grip on her, which had loosened as they were speaking, became almost vise-like as he hugged her to his chest, seemingly also as much in need of the comfort as she was.

"I am _so_ sorry for putting you through that," he croaked. "I never wanted that for you, _never_ . I only did what I had to do to—"

" _Don't ever say that to me again_ ," she snarled suddenly, struggling in his grasp. "Don't you dare!"

"Fi?" She couldn't believe he was honestly perplexed by her reaction. He reluctantly relinquished his hold on her, running his palms down her arms until he only held onto her hands. She wavered, fighting to remain sitting on her own and utterly determined to do so, the fury fueling her body was the only thing giving her the strength carry on.

"You _had_ to find the people that burned you, you _had_ to get back in with the CIA, you did what Anson said you _had_ to do until I _had_ to go to prison to stop you. You _had_ to work with those bastards to find the people who killed Nate and it was _those bastards_ who'd ordered it! I'll knock yar fecking teeth down yar bloody throat, ya ever say those words ta me again, ya bastid!" Her brogue thickened as her anger rose. "D'ya hear me? Do ya have any idea whot I've been through?"

"Yes, I know," he confessed, holding onto her hands, knowing what was probably coming next.

"Ya war _watching_ me?! " she hissed, her temper flaring white hot. "Ya let me think ya war dead-"

As he'd predicted, she tried to pull away and attack, but he caught her wrists and refused to let go.

"I did it because y _ou were right!"_ he shouted her down. " _You were right_ , _it was never going to end._ After Card, after Riley, there would have been someone else, there was always going to be someone else who wanted to _use me_ for their pawn, who wanted to _use you_ to hurt me, to control me. You were right and that's why I did it, Fi. That's why I let you think I was dead because the _whole world needs to think I'm dead_ if it's ever going to be over! "

He took a risk and dropped those deadly hands and grasped her face between his own large calloused fingers once more. "I had to make sure Bly was on my side, that he had all the evidence he needed to clear up this mess without me. I promised Sam I would make this right for him and I did. But to make it right for you, to give you want you wanted, to get out, all the way out, I had to die. So I convinced Bly that I had saved his life and, in exchange for that, that he had to let me go."

His intense stare bored into her bloodshot weary eyes, which suddenly lit with understanding.

"You set up him, " she whispered.

"Yes," he agreed. "You wanted a life free from government manipulation. I had to convince Bly not only that he owed me his life, but that the only way to make sure his case against Riley stuck was to have dead hero to offer up for the cause. An eye for an eye for the death of Card and a new bad guy to take the blame, all in a neat folder that could be sealed away and life at the Agency goes on."

Her ever shifting moods of late changed again, morphing from wrath to burning curiosity.

"Michael, what happened? We saw the car go up and but then the boat blew up…."

"I put an end to it, _all_ of it. I wasn't going to leave a psychotic CIA agent and a Mexican drug lord behind who'd already tried to kill my family. Dead men tell no tales, but the trail of evidence does. I even used one of our signature devices from the RIRA campaign. I was hoping you'd catch on, but it was almost too much of hint." He leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers.

"I made you a promise that things would change and I wasn't going to break that promise. But to do that, I had to hurt you, so that I don't have to hurt you, don't have to leave you ever again."

This time, Fiona buried herself in his embrace. He had done all that for her. She had lost everything for him, her family, her home, her possessions, her freedom, her sanity… But he had finally chosen her over everything, over his job, over his friends, over his old life, absolutely everything.

It was the grand gesture to end all grand gestures.

And it was almost more than she could bear. She felt such a rush of adrenaline, such a mass of conflicting emotions, loss, relief, joy, fear, anticipation that she almost fainted and she was dimly aware of the panic stiffening his limbs as she sagged against him, her breath coming in short gasps.

He eased her back down onto the bed and put an oxygen mask back over her face. It was then she finally took in the rest of her surroundings beyond the tanned and hirsute version of her lover. It wasn't just a room, it was a state room. The sounds and the motions, which had previously been in the background, suddenly came to the fore. They were on a yacht, a large one if she'd had to guess, and she was in a cabin that had been converted into a sick bay. She wondered absently how many other people were on board… how many other people knew…

"Michael, your motber…. "

"I know, Fi. But I promised it was going to be just you and me, just liked you asked. I'm sorry, but I can't risk letting anyone else know. I've already taken one more person aboard than I'd planned."

She stared at him blankly, which seemed to amuse him. His lips broken into an irrepressible grin until he was beaming at her. "You don't know?"

She continued to treat him to a bewildered look while she tried to puzzle out what he could be talking about. "Do you feel better now?" he asked, reaching for the clear plastic covering her face.

As she nodded her assent, he removed the device and lovingly stroked her cheek. "You really don't know, do you?" he queried again as his other hand slid from his lap and came to rest protectively over her abdomen. "Me darlin' girl, ya thought ya wa' jus' sick wit' grief fer tha likes o' me, did ya?"

" _It's all over now. Yer safe now. Ya both are. I promise."_

As his words came back to him, she gasped. All the sickness and the misery and the exhaustion … it all made sense now. It wasn't just the anguish of thinking she had lost him… it was _so much more_ …

"How did _you_ know?" she pressed him, completely perplexed, but suddenly very glad she was already lying down as this impossibility tried to turn into reality in her head. Could it really be true?

He was good, one of the best, but if she didn't realize what was going on, how could he possibly have figured it out…?

"Besides noticing you were putting on weight in all the right places from afar," he smirked, moving the digits lingering on her cheekbone to trace down her body, skimming the outside of her breast on their way to the curve of her hip where they settled. "Well, I admit I didn't put that together right away. It was when I helped the doctor get you into some more comfortable clothes that I got it."

It was then Fiona realized that she was wearing a loose sleeveless white cotton top, a thigh length skirt of matching material and no under garments. She wasn't sure how she felt about having Michael and a stranger undress her, but she waited for his explanation without comment.

"The ship's doctor examined you before we left port. I was worried about how sick you'd been and didn't want to find out it was something more serious in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean." His voice and his eyes took on a hard edge then. "They'd used propofal on you in back in Paris, so I was concerned about that, too. You wouldn't wake up…" She could tell by the heat in his voice that whoever had done that to her had gotten just short of grievous bodily harm as a reward.

He gathered her two smaller hands and placed them over her stomach and then covered them with his two larger ones. "You don't know how hard it was, seeing you hurting like that, not being able to tell—"

" _Really_ , Michael?"

He broke into that killer smile that had charmed women the world over, most especially her in a dingy bar in Belfast one night oh so long ago.

"I nearly had a heart attack when Armand showed up. I didn't know what I was going to do if you didn't make it on time to the spot where I had my terrorist attack scheduled. You were supposed to go with Dani and Jesse to Egypt, you know. I was going to take you back to that safe house, the one in Cairo where we _reconnected_." He was grinning ear to ear now.

"They don't know, do they?" As she said it, she realized who was the only one who did know: _Sam._

"They were _supposed_ to get you to Cairo, but they were on _a need to know_ basis, and, yea, they don't know. So I'm guessing they didn't insist when you decided to go off to Milan on your own." She could heard the fear underlying the humorous exasperation on the surface. "And then I had to get creative in Paris as well as getting our new identities taken care of, Mrs. Josephine Zolnerowich."

She turned her hands over in his, using him to pull herself back up into a sitting position. She examined the passports he held out for her inspection, but then reached for him. They wrapped their arms around one another as he dropped the documents onto the bed and she laid her ear to his chest, centering herself on his heart beat, so familiar and steadfast in this brave new world she had suddenly found herself in. The final proof that he meant it was laying behind her on the mattress.

"So, can you forgive me for hurting you one last time?"

She didn't answer with words at first. She met his sincere gaze and then kissed him, long and slow, feeling the brush of his new beard against her face and reveling in it. She let her feelings build up along with with the intensity of their kiss before she had the courage to say the words first.

"Yes, because I love you, Michael," she told him, staring him directly in the eyes. "Love you, Mikhal."

The look on his face said it all, but this time he did more than let his expression do the talking.

"I need you, Fi. I always have," he smiled at the pout starting to form before he added. "More importantly, _I love ya_ , _me darlin' girl. More than all tha gold at tha end o' tha rainbow."_


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** _This is the third part of the 7.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 1 in "Reconnecting."_

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 **7.01 AU - We'll Always Have Paris - Part 3**

 _An alternate for Season Seven and beyond following on from 6.18 – Game Change_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Atlantic Ocean, undisclosed location 2012_

 _She didn't answer with words at first. She met his sincere gaze and then kissed him, long and slow, feeling the brush of his new beard against her face and reveling in it. She let her feelings build up along with the intensity of their kiss before she had the courage to say the words first._

 _"Yes, because I love you, Michael," she told him, staring him directly in the eyes. "Love you, Mikhal."_

 _The look on his face said it all, but this time he did more than let his expression do the talking._

 _"I need you, Fi. I always have," he smiled at the pout starting to form before he added. "More importantly,I love ya_ , _me darlin' girl. More than all tha gold at tha end o' tha rainbow."_

Her answering smile was dazzling. Their mouths met as he slowly pushed her back down onto the mattress, sweeping the documents aside with his right hand as he supported the back of her head with his left. A contented sigh leaked out from between their locked lips and he broke the kiss and grinned widely, brushing the back of his hand over her cheek. _They were almost there. Just a few more things to accomplish and they would start their new life._

Tears started to gather in the corners of her eyes again, still swollen and puffy from her previous crying jag, but probably no worse than his own were right now. He noticed then how exhausted she looked, thinner than she should have been with cheekbones almost jutting and so much paler than the tan beauty he had asked to move in with him.

"Fi?" he question as he thumbed away the water from her face. "Is something wrong?"

"No," she beamed. "Something is very right. I just… I'm just tired."

"You must be," Michael agreed as he reached across to gather up the precious passports and deposited them in the night stand drawer. "Take a nap," he urged.

"I just woke up," she disagreed and then stifled a yawn.

"Me stubborn Irish lass," he chuckled as he rolled over the top of her body without putting any of the weight of his upon her. Landing in the middle of the mattress on his back, her lover pulled her to him and she snuggled up against his side, her head on his broad chest, her shoulder tucked under his arm and hand splayed out over his abdomen in a gesture reminiscent of what he had done to her moments ago.

"Be glad am too tired ta kick yar ass," she slurred and settled in.

"I thought you forgave me." The humor was evident in his voice and then he kissed the top of her head. "Go ta sleep, me darlin' girl. We have tha rest o' our lives fer ya ta tame me."

Fiona didn't want to sleep, but her body had other ideas and she relaxed in his embrace.

As such, it was some time later before press of lips to a particularly sore spot on her neck penetrated her consciousness. _Why am I so damned tired?_ _I don' remember Bella or Rose being this rundown._ It felt like all she had done was sleep. At least the nausea had settled down and she wondered absently if the doctor had given her something for it.

Doctor… There _had_ been a doctor here… and _Michael had been here_ …. Helping her undress?

"Shhh…." The sound of his voice, buzzing right next to her ear, cleared away all the confusion. He was there, lying next to her, spooned up against her, the warmth of his body pressing against the length of hers was comforting and she let out a relieved sigh.

"How long…?" Fiona questioned, realizing that sometime while she had been out, she'd been moved to another room. This had to be the master suite with its ridiculously oversized sleeping accommodations and the luxurious appointments of the rest of the suite.

"Have you been asleep? A couple of hours give or take."

She closed her eyes again. It felt like she would sleep until they got to wherever they were going. Then it dawned on her. She had no idea at all where they were going.

And she decided she didn't care. When they got there, they would be Mikhal and Josephine. But for right now, they were just Michael and Fiona, finally free, finally together, finally alone!

And with that tantalizing thought fresh in her mind, her traitorous body took the rest of her away to dream land. Michael wanted to join her; however, even though he had seen his friend off as well as the doctor and they were out to sea, he still couldn't relax. Any one of the crew could betray them; though he highly doubted it, the possibility was still there.

He swept her hair away from her shoulder again, kissing softly over the angry red mark on her neck. It made him crazy that they had drugged her, but there nothing he could do to change it now. He tried to focus on the fact that she was lying here in his arms in the relative safety of his asset's yacht, especially now that he knew the real reason behind her illnesses. His right hand drifted over her exposed stomach and rubbed small, gentle, lazy circles over her belly.

When the doctor had first asked to see him and had subsequently told him to help remove Fiona's clothes so she could check on "his new bride," he had for one brief irrational second thought that the doctor was looking for signs of sexual assault and his blood had boiled.

Apparently what he'd been thinking was all too clear on his face because, after they had changed her clothes, he had excused himself and Dr. Basheer had let him go quite willingly.

Thinking about the first good look he'd had of her in months, never mind naked, had him stiffening in one critical place and he felt like a bastard for wanting to grope his lover while she was passed out. He hadn't done it to anyone else, even as a teenager; it seemed just wrong to do it to her now. That and the fact that she was just as likely to deck him, or worse yet hurt herself trying to if he woke her up that way, it seemed to him he would just have to bide his time until she came around. It had been months already, he could wait a little longer.

As he stroked her impossibly soft yet still firm abdomen, he wondered at his own reaction to the news he was going to be a father. He tried to untangle the puzzle with the same resolve he had used pursuing his burn notice and maybe that was the answer. Michael Westen, burned spy, reinstated spy, re-rejected spy, hated traitor, subject of a national manhunt, could never be someone's father. Even Victor Roshenko had too many enemies to contemplate a family. But Mikhal Zolnerowich… that man could have a pregnant wife without it being a death sentence for everyone involved, that man could hold his wife and unborn child and be happy.

"Thot feels nice," she murmured low and lilting, rubbing her whole body and her backside in particular against him.

"Does it now?" Michael queried "An' just which part are ya referrin' ta, me luv?"

"All o' it," she purred as he bucked his hips slightly.

"I thought ya war sleeping, me beauty. But since yer not…"

His hand slid upwards, blazing a trail of fire along her skin as it slipped under the white cotton top, pushing it out of the way. He palmed his left breast, still surprised how much larger and rounder it had become even though he'd already seen the evidence of that earlier on.

She was no longer only a handful. Flexing his fingers and stroking his thumb over her already hardened nipple, Fiona squirmed against him, putting friction against his rapidly hardening member. Her low moans and movement when straight to the root of him.

"Yer quite…" he began with a twinge of wonder as he nipped and lapped at the "sensitive…" place where her neck and shoulder met, his new beard skimming along her flesh and leaving additional goose bumps as he continued to massage the mound of flesh in his palm.

Fiona couldn't believe how intense the feelings were as his hand shifted to cover her right breast now, which was just enlarged and hard as the other side. She'd seen it happen to others, heard the remarks from her sister-in-laws, but still couldn't wrap her hand around how much more powerful the sensations were now. Of course, the time apart probably…

She was momentarily distracted as his palm slid down her body again and glided over her mound towards the hem of her white cotton skirt. Pulling the garment up over her hips as he rose up on one elbow, she sighed as his mouth left her neck and he guided her onto her back.

The dark haired man smiled down at her and the Irish woman couldn't believe how different he looked with that mane of black hair and thick beard he was sporting. Just imagining how that would feel between her legs drew a deep hum from somewhere in her chest.

"Do ya like whot ya see then?"

He stole away whatever answer she'd intended to give as his mouth descended to cover hers in a passionate kiss and he caressed her hip bones and rubbed against the flesh between them before his long fingers threaded through the fine hair between her legs.

Since prison, there had been little time to wax and further, he'd asked her not to. She wasn't sure why, but it had been convenient to not deal with it while they had been on the run for their lives. As his middle digit penetrated her folds, his tongue brushed against her teeth until she opened her mouth to him.

His warm wet tongue moved in time with his exploration of the essence of her being as her legs fell open and made room for him to move. He captured her moans with his own mouth, kissing her deeply as their old dance for dominance began in earnest.

Michael wanted to just take her, the urge to be slamming into her almost too much to control, but he couldn't do that to this woman who lie beneath him, looking at him with so much love as he broke the kiss. He began to press his lips to her neck, her ear and then her clavicle as his hand continued to work its magic, his palm pressing on her most sensitive spot while his middle finger penetrated her.

Faster than she thought possible, she was seeing stars and gasping his name as she planted her feet and pushed up against the divine pressure on her womanhood. He continued to kiss her face and nuzzle her hair as shivered against him and tried to get her breathing under control. Light, almost smug, laughter left him as he rubbed his nose against the shell of her ear and his beard scraped along her cheekbone.

"Ya seem quite sure o' yarself," she remarked breathlessly and he chuckled softly in response.

"War ya not satisfied? Well, let me take care o' thot then."

He sat up then and pulled the blue dress shirt off, followed by his white undershirt. Fiona's eyes roamed over his chest, noting how much thinner he was, how much more defined his muscles were. She reached out a hand and let her fingers wander up the taut ridges of his abdomen until she splayed her hand out over his chest and let one of her thumbs scrape across his own hardened nipple. She was pleased when he jerked and beamed at him.

"oh, thar'll be enough time fer thot, don'cha worry, me girl."

The sound of his lilting voice, so deep and husky, brought another wave of heat to her already aching core. "Take all yar clothes off," she ordered. "I wan' ta see ya."

"Ladies first," he countered. Although the sight of her lying open to him, her top pushed up above her heaving breasts and her skirt spread upon her belly, her legs and her sex bare was more than enough for him, Michael had to admit he wanted to see all of her, what little was left covered, as well.

She held up her arms and he pulled her and her top up in one smooth motion. Sitting up together, they melted into an embrace, kissing passionately as their chests mutually molded as one, sending fire racing through the pair of them, their emotions and their nerves ablaze.

Fiona let out a sound of satisfaction that was practically a purr as they broke apart.

He reached out to cup her cheek in his palm, blue eyes boring into blue green.

"I've missed you so much," he confessed.

"Good," she countered evenly. "I hope yer remember how thot feels, cuz I don' think I'll ever fergit whot it felt like ta think I'd lost ya fer good," and she started to tremble at that.

"Oh, Fi, I—"

"Don' apologize," she said simply. "Jus' don' leave me ever again."

"I promise."

He took her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly as he lowered her back down onto the bed. Then he reached down to grasp the waistband of the skirt and tugged it over her hips as she lifted and cast it aside. "You're so beautiful," he told her with all the love he could muster.

The dark haired man stood by the edge of the bed and made short work of his pants and boxers before lowering the lights with a tiny remote. He took a moment to ensure that the door was indeed locked and then another to admire the beyond king-sized bed in their room.

In the meantime, Fiona let her eyes glide appreciatively over his naked form, something she hadn't seen fully or openly in months, allowing her gaze to linger on his dripping manhood being so prominently being displayed before her as he climbed back onto the mattress.

As he covered her body with his, a shiver ran through her whole frame, drawing an answering groan from him that was satisfied with all the shades of meaning the word could possibly have. They both reveled in the full skin on skin contact, her hands skimming his sides and his back.

Michael pushed himself up onto his elbows and began to move down her body, kissing, licking and nipping along the way from her neck to her enlarged and aching breasts. As he dropped his head towards the left one, mouthing the mound of soft flesh and being pleasantly not surprised that he could no longer draw almost all of it in, his hand covered her right one, the sensitive nub caught between his thumb and forefinger. He palmed her breast and squeezed the hardened peak in a rhythm with his lapping and suckling on the other such that she was writhing underneath him in no time, her thighs rubbing vigorously on his erection pinned between her legs.

When he stopped, they were both gasping for air. He knew he would not last if he kept that up much longer.

"Would ya fuck me already?" It was supposed to be a demand, but it came out more like a plea. His white teeth grinned from amidst his whiskers and his blue eyes sprinkled at the needy whine in her voice. Fair enough, he was already hard enough to cut diamonds himself.

But…

"Not yet, me darlin', yar patience will be rewarded."

As his mouth trailed hot kisses down her flesh, she shivered again in anticipation of what was to come. He almost slid off the end of the bed and settled between her legs, as she raised them up, laying her limbs along his shoulders. Michael turned and scraped his teeth lightly over her inner thighs each in turn, making sure to rub his face and beard enticingly along the soft flesh there.

By the time he was kissing her properly, Fiona was already writhing uncontrollably, her heads woven in his large black hair, tugging and pulling almost painfully as he lapped at her folds and gave extra attention to her special spot while she pressed herself into him. Her legs tightened against his shoulders as her moans turned into deep, loud, guttural groans.

Her lover had no more than slipped two fingers inside her when she came with a cry of his name on her lips, her muscles pulsing and squeezing against the digits as her fingers tangled in his hair with a jerk. He almost came himself watching her, but her dark haired lover was more than determined to enjoy every moment of their reunion properly,

Michael slowly climbed back up towards the head of the bed, stroking lightly with his hands and brushing his lips over all her as her muscles continued to quiver. He gathered her into his arms, hugging her tightly with his engorged length pressed firmly into her belly. That brought small smirk to his face, thinking about what they had created together that was inside her right now. It made him want to enter into her depths again and never leave. He realized once again that he'd always felt the safest and most satisfied in his world when he was wrapped in her intimate embrace and he longed to be there.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded an affirmation rather than speak and that caused him to chuckle softly again.

He eased her onto her back yet again as he used his knee to tease her legs apart. She opened herself to him willingly, just as eager as he was to feel him inside her once more. As he positioned himself at her entrance, he latched onto her mouth and pushed his tongue in, exploring the wet softness while he eased his harden length into the delicious wet warmth of her core, stopping only when he was fully sheathed in the center of her being.

The feeling was indescribable. Despite all the sex they had had over the years, there was something special and exhilarating beyond the norm, which had been pretty spectacular on its own. Fiona had known the loss of him all too many times and to be with him again intimately after she had been sure he was lost to her forever as almost more than she could bear.

When Michael started moving against her, a slow, deliberate, almost reluctant to have it end motion, she felt the wetness gather in her eyes. But as she looked up at him with all the love in her heart written on her face, she noted his eyes were also shining from devotion and unshed tears. She let her hands drift along his supple back muscles to rest on his perfect bottom, squeezing the taut flesh and urging him onward with her nails, such that they were.

"I love you," she told him as he stroked faster, the pleasant sensation of him filling her in a way that only came from being with this man sang out along every nerve in her body. She wanted to keep him there with her as they were right now, but yet she always wanted more of him. It was a delicious paradox that Fiona never wanted to solve, just explore for as long as she was allowed to live. She was already floating on a sea of bliss, her senses almost whited out as she came yet again and he began to shake and thrust harder as his orgasm took him.

As the aftershocks shot through him, he felt a profound sense of bliss that was both relief for the end of their ordeal and the joy of belonging to someone who had loved him in spite of everything he had done and had been. He didn't know how long he had lain on her, enfolded in her embrace, arms and legs squeezing him tight, welcoming him home, shuddering as his muscles continued to twitch, but he knew one thing beyond all things at that moment.

"I love ya, me darlin' girl," he whispered as he got his voice under control again.

"More than all tha gold at tha end o' tha rainbow," she finished, kissing him passionately again, content to stay there with him forever.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** _This is the fourth part of the 7.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 3 in "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies."_

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 **7.01 AU - We'll Always Have Paris - Part 4**

 _An alternate for Season Seven and beyond following on from 6.18 – Game Change_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Conde, Paraíba, Brazil 2031_

Miguel Cruz was a man acquainted with sadness. As he sat atop the hill, looking down on the white block and red clay barrel tile roofed manor house of the twelve acre farm he'd managed for an absentee foreign owner for the last twelve years, he could not stop the tear that rolled down his cheek. Ma had been his constant companion and, though he knew his wife would understand, he himself was having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that he had been crying for an animal.

He had rescued the trio of Geoffroy's Cat kittens, whose mother had only been defending her young from their pair of Belgium shepherds, who in turn had been defending his youngest child at the time, who had just wanted to pet the kitties. Needless to say, everyone involved, especially four year old Amanda, had felt terrible about the entire misunderstanding. Since his wife Fernanda had been heavily pregnant at the time and the dogs were particularly hyper protective, he had taken the three wild feline babies to care for in his work shop, where he repaired old cars for his friends, build things as he needed them and managed his hidden stores of things that might prove useful one day.

During the day, he took carried them with him to work at his body shop in the small town of Conde, where he repaired and retro fitted the poorly made new cars that the Brazilian auto industry cranked out for various customers. One kitten had not survived the first week and the other male had disappeared into the woods one night when it was nine weeks old, assumedly to live out it life in the wild as nature had intended.

The last of the litter however had survived, thrived and latched onto Miguel with a loyalty virtually never seen in a pure bred Geoffroy's Cat. Since the feline had had no patience for anyone but the man of the house and, strangely enough, his mother, who had moved in with them along with her grandson Carlos the year before, Mr. Cruz had been forced to purchase a pair of Safari kittens, a crossbreed of that wild cat with a domestic cat that had been around since late 1977, so that children could have their own kittens to play with. The two Safari's grew into twenty pound balls of fur, affection, energy and cleverness. They kept everyone occupied and even the dogs liked them better.

By a strange coincidence, the exotic animal exporter who had been illegally selling not only the crossbreds but a number of native South American cats had mysteriously lost his entire stock and business in a fire later that year. Unhappy accidents often befell those up to no good around Conde.

Miguel Cruz was acquainted with sadness because he had known its corollary, happiness. So, when there was a parting, he could look back with bittersweet memories of happier times. Somehow, the jungle cat had taken on the name of the only other person in the household the animal tolerated. Maybe it was because he'd called his mother "Ma" enough times in the mouser's presence that she'd just decided it was her name, too. _Females and felines have too much in common,_ he thought.

The dark haired man absently patted the mound of earth underneath which his pet lay, yes, he could now admit that he'd had a pet, and looked over at his mother's grave. She had died a year earlier from congestive heart failure, which she had written off as the flu until it was too late. He laughed lightly at the irony, a shaky sound, remembering the spiky blonde hypochondriac that had greeted him during his exile to Miami who would not have missed an opportunity to claim an actual illness.

As a young man, Michael Westen had been a man of few emotions and most of them dark. He had known anguish, bitterness, rage, betrayal, and he had known relief from those emotions. As such, it had been almost natural for him to slip into the Eastern Europe cover ID's of his early career. Victor Roshenko, Magdalene's nephew, had been one of his oldest covers still intact amongst the Russians.

But now Victor had passed into history and vanished, as surely as Anton Yelchin's massive yacht had disappeared into the distance whilst they watched from the beach of that small unknown island in the Caribbean Sea on which they had been deposited. The next day, an unmarked vessel full of Irish gun runners had picked them up and deposited them at the Port of Buenos Aires, where Mikhal and Josephina Zolnerowich vanished into the Russian immigrant population of the capital. As far as anyone else knew, they had arrived with the last wave fleeing the motherland in the early 1990's.

When their daughter, Alexandra Gabrielle Zolnerowich, had been born six months later with some complications, Mikhal had known a fear and a joy so fierce that they only thing he had to compare it to was the highs and the lows of his time in Ireland pretending to be Michael McBride. His feelings, though he could now put a name to them after all this time, had been just as difficult to deal with then as they had been when he was falling madly in love with his asset, Fiona Glenanne.

" _Mic-hael? Is she-?"_

 _They had taken the baby by an emergency C-section and had totally sedated his wife in their haste to get the baby out before the umbilical cord could finish choking her. So when his "French born" spouse had come out of the anaesthesia speaking English instead of her alleged native tongue, it could've have been a problem had anyone else been paying attention. But all their focus had been on the new-born, for which he'd been grateful. He knew their decision to avoid hospitals had been wise one in the past, but there had been no line when it came to his wife and child on that day._

 _When they had handed him that tiny warm bundle with the blue tinged skin and the unfocused eyes, he had a moment of panic unlike any he'd experienced in his forty six years on the planet, but that had vanished in the wake of the utter relief that had flood through him when those little eyes had latched onto his and that small mouth had formed a perfect "O" and the tears flowed unbidden._

 _As he knelt down near the gurney to which his groggy lover was still strapped, the watery smile on his face matching her own when he held their new daughter up for her inspection. Fifi's eyes were almost as unfocused as their little one's as she fought the chemicals in her blood stream._

" _You were so brave, my little angels," he murmured in Irish too low for anyone else to hear and then kissed them both on the forehead. "You are a fighter, like your mother; you will never give up."_

A warm breeze ruffled the treetops as well as his hair, which still had retained its blackness after all these years. He smiled at that thought and how often his wife had remarked on his and her fortune. Those first years had flown by so fast. After three years of giddiness over their new life and the new life in it and the dread that something from their old life might return to haunt them, the young immigrant family had sailed out of the Port of Buenos Aires never to be seen or heard of again.

 _Complications late in Fifi's unexpected pregnancy with their second child had prompted a stay at a private undisclosed island off the coast of Brazil, where once again Josephine had found herself under the now constant care of Dr. Julia Basheer, with the occasional visit from various former members of an Irish terrorist group, while her husband divided his attention between his two favorite girls, one of which had not yet been born, and their beloved mother. It had been another change of scenery that had brought on conflicting emotions, tension, anticipation, contentment._

" _There you are, Papa,"_ Amanda said in her flawless Portuguese, breaking into his reverie. She had inherited his looks, a female version of himself, but she had gotten her mother's ability to sneak up him. She knelt behind him on the soft soil and wrapped her arms around her father's shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. _"You miss both of them today."_ It was a statement, not a question.

Ma the wild cat had died almost to the day of the one year anniversary of the death of Ma "Cruz."

But as he covered his second child's hands with his own larger ones, he wasn't thinking about what he had lost. He was thinking about the day the teenager with the long black mane had been born.

 _They'd been sitting on the beach enjoying the sunshine while their first daughter, a tiny clone of her mother, had attempted to unsuccessfully to herd the border collie who lived on the island and rather had been escorted herself back from the pull of the tide again and again. Gabrielle's determination and her maternal pout had made them both smile. Fifi had been sitting between his legs, leaning into his chest with a rolled up beach blanket resting against his stomach and her lower back._

 _He'd had his hands splayed over her lower abdomen, feeling the movements of their due-soon-to-join-them offspring, and had been peppering her hair, ears and shoulders with tiny kisses._

" _Je suis désolé," she'd said sadly._

" _Why are you sorry?" he'd queried in Russian._

 _She'd let her head fall back against his shoulder and sighed. "For putting you through all this," she'd answered in Argentinian Spanish this time. "I know we didn't plan to—"_

" _Shhhh, there's a lot of things we haven't planned that turned out just fine," he'd assured her, her accent always better than his with the Latino languages. "I'm just glad you didn't believe me."_

 _And in his mind's eye, they were sitting side by side on another beach and he had been so hurt and so afraid for her. The man he had been, Michael Westen, wanted to push her away again for her own protection, but he had needed her so much. He'd wondered then what would have happened if she's agreed with him about deserving better than him and the life he'd been living._

" _All I want is to be by your side. I'm not leaving it again," she had declared in English in his memory before Fifi had groaned and let out a French epithet, followed by a quieter Irish one, as she squirmed in his arms for a very long moment in the present. "I think it's time to go in," she'd declared and he had concurred as the red wetness had already spread onto his own trousers as well._

 _Mikhal had been reluctant to leave his love's side to assist the good doctor with his daughter's birth, but Julia had been short on available hands at the time. So instead of standing by his wife's head, holding her hand and coaching her on her breathing, he had been ordered to come to Dr. Basheer's aid in bringing the baby girl safely into the world. It was the single most terrifying and rewarding thing he had ever done in a lifetime filled with blood freezing occurrences and completed missions._

 _Another few weeks on the island to ensure his beloved Fifi's recovery was complete and then Juan César Benítez Amodeo and his wife Natalia Marisa Ortego Iglesias arrived in Uruguay, sailing in through the Port of Montevideo where Juan had a job as mechanic waiting for him and Natalia planned on staying home to care for the three year old Gabriella and the new-born Amanda._

"Onde você está?" his daughter asked in her musical accent, drawing him out of his memories again. After learning Spanish, which had proved something of a challenge for him, learning Portuguese had been comparatively easy, especially as he had such a good teacher with such a talented tongue.

" _I was thinking what a beautiful baby you were, so quiet and so serious, and so not like your sister."_

Amanda laughed at that. _"I'm going to tell her you said that when she gets back from the farm."_

" _I think she already knows."_

Her older sister was a "mini me" of their mother if every such a being existed. Head strong, sharp, with a temper to match her coloring, Gabrielle Cruz was the epitome of who Fiona Glenanne had once been. It was all her cousin Carlos could do to keep up with her, even if he was three years older; only someone that head strong could parlay a visit to an eco-farm to study argo-foresty into not just a successful, self-sustaining agricultural enterprise, but a popular eco-tourist spot as well.

Miguel was not thrilled with the influx of outsiders to the nearby farm, but the type of person that Gabrielle's vacation offering tended to attract was not the type he typically concerned himself with.

" _Mama said for you to quit moping and come to lunch. Gaby and Carlos have muchos touristas to entertain today. They won't be back before breakfast tomorrow."_

Which didn't really present a problem to him as both his daughter and his nephew were well armed and well acquainted with the use of those weapons. The eco-farm was not only self sustaining, but self defending as well. Besides, he was more concerned about the younger two's plans for the future, simultaneously apologetic and worried, if the truth be told. Michael Westen had been dead for almost twenty years now, but that didn't stop Miguel Cruz from being concerned about any number of people who might recognize his son and even more so his daughter's resemblance to that famous former spy should either of them venture outside of Brazil, if they desired to do so someday soon.

" _Moping?"_ he chuckled as he slowly got to his feet, now remembering all the times Sam Axe had complained about being too old for their various adventures. _"Your Papa does not mope, my girl."_

" _Avó said otherwise,"_ the teen corrected with a wide show of white teeth.

" _Your avó talked too much,"_ he groused good-naturedly, casting a glance back at her marker stone before turning his gaze towards the trail that wandered down to the house. Having walked it so many times, his strict attention wasn't necessary and the mention of his mother's tendency to overshare had him reliving one of the rare times Madeline Westen had been stunned speechless.

" _Race you,"_ Amanda called and took off before he'd taken a step. She had long ago disappeared in the house by the time he had arrived on the back porch near the pool, settling onto the patio chair with a low groan and removing his boots, fully engaged in that bittersweet remembrance.

 _Charlie Westen had had the misfortune of being born into a family of addictive personalities. How they all chose to deal with it, or not, was another matter. His father had become hooked at a young age on gambling, booze and later drugs after his older brother had left. Ruth had taken the boy in hopes a change of scenery to a place that didn't include loan sharks, drunks, fences and various other low lifes hanging around would be helpful. Unfortunately, she didn't go far or fast enough._

 _Getting a coded message from Sam Axe after seven years of silence had put him on high alert and had momentarily left him queasy during a time he was already on edge. His wife's pregnancies brought him much happiness, something that had stunned him the first time. But they also filled him with dread, knowing that the births were difficult for her and the children and there was nothing he could do about that. It was the best and the worst surveillance detail he had ever been on. For a couple who hadn't planned any of their progeny, they were now on their way to their third child._

 _Ruth Westen had died in car accident, trapped in the burning car as it had exploded on impact. But whether it was truly a mishap, a leftover from her ex-husband's former dealings or a feint meant to test if Michael Westen was truly dead, the former Navy SEAL decided that the evidence for any one conclusion was not clear enough to take the risk and Madeline and Charlie soon met with similar "end." Official police records ruled it an accident with a gas range that had burned the house down._

 _Charlie found the clandestine trip a great adventure, but Sam had been ready to push Maddie overboard by the time they had arrived offshore of that infamous unmarked island in the edges of the Caribbean Sea. So there was no small amount of delight on Mr. Axe's face when the stranger who'd climbed aboard their boat in full scuba gear pulled off the mask and mouthpiece and uttered:_

" _Hi, Mom."_

 _Suddenly, the woman who couldn't stop talking all at once had nothing whatsoever to say. Then she fainted, much to the distress of everyone involved._

Miguel had to smile at that as he banged the dirt from his soles and set his leather work boots beside the chair. Even unconscious, his mother could still make a scene.

 _But when she had finally awoken, the picture swapping party had been in full swing. Michael Westen had been filled with the first full-on bout of home sicknesses he'd ever encountered in over a decade. He hadn't cried in Sam's presence since that awful day in Chechnya and that miserable moment when he had nearly pulled the older man through the window of the Charger and cheerfully beat the crap out of him for letting Fiona turn herself in. But this was a happy moment for both men._

 _There was almost a waterworks which neither would have ever lived down had anyone other than Charlie been there to witness it. They were both choked up until Nate's son had reminded them that_ guys don't cry. _The same did not apply to Sam and Fiona apparently when the slightly green but determined woman emerged from the hold of the yacht and announced Madeline was going to be fine, having been treated to her own personal homecoming cum interrogation by Michael's mother._

" _Tinkerbell" was he managed to get out before he was punched in the arm forcefully enough to leave a bruise for letting her think Michael was dead and then he had enclosed her in a tight bear hug, cheerfully ignoring all the sea water that was soaking into his Tommy Bahamas' finest off of her wet suit. With a watery laugh and a shaky salute of a beer, pictures of Sam's grandchildren, Evan's daughters Kate and June, as well as his and Elsa's son, Sam Axe Jr. were pulled up on the I-phone. Next, Jesse and Dani's twins, Noelle and Nicole, were admired and cooed over and an appropriately cryptic recorded message from the Porters let them know that everything was safe._

 _It had been as fine a homecoming as he could ask for and more than he deserved. He'd felt guilty that Ruth Westen had had to die in order for them to take the risk of being in one another's presence._

It was hard to say what had been the better gift, the private reunion in the middle of ocean or their new start in Brazil courtesy of a shell corporation so deep the connection to the Dearborn's would never see the light of day. _Plus,_ he would be forever grateful that there was a caretakers' house on the 12 acre property in addition to the main house when they arrived at the estate up in the rolling green hills near Conde. He could tell by the way _Fernada's_ eyes lit up, despite the difficulty the trip had been for her, that living on a farm again, her childhood home that had become her retirement dream, had made her as happy as he'd seen her when she was playing with high explosives.

Almost as happy as the time she had nearly depleted her stock of C-4 convincing a drug lord that God was frowning on his attempt to use the nearby Catholic orphanage as a new distribution center.

" _Your lunch is getting cold,"_ a familiar voice chided, her perfume filling his senses as the woman he loved more than ever dropped into his lap. _"I swear, Anne and Glenn are going to figure out how to open that oven next. Those two fur balls popped the latch and raided the pantry this morning! "_

Miguel smiled up at her, that killer smile that could melt her resolve or set her on fire in an instant after all these years, and then shrugged _. "You were the one who insisted on getting the Safari kittens for the kids. Not my fault they're that agile and smart."_

" _And you're still a smart ass, aren't you?"_ she smirked, leaning in and kissing him long and slow.

" _Stop that!"_ their preteen son demanded, skidding to a halt with her H&K in one hand and its clip in the other, the dogs hot on his heels. _"I field stripped it, cleaned it and reassembled in less than-"_

" _Elias Donovan Cruz, what is the rule about removing a weapon from the armory?"_ his mother snapped. _"Do I need to tell you again? How long would you like to be grounded for this time?"_

Behind his irritated wife, Miguel winked at his son and silently mouthed, _"Good job."_

The dark haired boy, an improbable mix of his parent's DNA, grinned back and flew back into the house, taking the two barking canines with him.

" _Sean, Liam, shut it!"_ she hollered after the dogs. _"Elias, get cleaned up for lunch!"_ She turned in her husband's lap and thumped him on the back of the head. " _Don't encourage him."_

" _Got to,_ " he disagreed with another smile and then laughed. _"I think you like telling your brothers what to do too much, even if they're wearing fur coats."_

" _Stop changing the subject,"_ she ordered. _"You would have never allowed the girls to get away with that and don't you dare give me that boys will be boys shite because I've heard that load of—"_

He wasn't indulging his son because he was his son or because he was the youngest of the three or even because he'd had a more traumatic birth than his sisters. He did it because Elias had died, but God had given the boy back to him and there was nothing Miguel wouldn't do to see him happy.

 _There had been no time for the planned trip to the island for the family for the birth of their third child. The boy who would be named after his paternal grandmother and brother had showed up a month early. They hadn't gotten any farther into civilization than orphanage up the road sponsored by Matriz Nossa Senhora de Lourdes when the baby decided he wasn't going to wait any longer._

 _With all the sisters praying down the walls of heaven and a travelling Peace Corps medic to assist him in the little room they used for a infirmary, Miguel had brought his son into the world, only to apparently lose him a mere moments later. But Michael Westen had always refused to not see a solution to a problem and Miguel Cruz had taken his petition directly to the source, as he'd breathed life back into his son's blood smattered little body, as he had not been able to do for his younger brother. Cries of sorrow had turned to cries of rejoicing this time and he was so thankful._

" _I'm happy to see you're not moping anymore,"_ she returned, ignoring his gibe and lifting a hand to skim over his cheek and thick beard that was shot through with tiny slivers of silver, redirecting his attention to the present. His smile widened as he thought about the young man on the edge of adolescence, his hair, his eyes, her build, her features, their temperament. Life was good after all.

"How can I?" he chuckled. "I've a home filled with puppies, kittens and gun toting babies. I have everything I never knew I wanted and the one thing I've always wanted, even when I was too pig headed to see what was right in front of me the whole time. What else could a man possibly need?"

She grinned back at him, as he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight.

"And I have the woman I love more than all the gold at the end of the rainbow," he concluded as he drew her in for a soft, deep kiss as he threaded his hands through her long, still auburn locks.

And Miguel Cruz's lunch got very cold indeed.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** _This is the fifth part of the 7.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 12 in "Reconnecting."_

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 **7.01 AU - We'll Always Have Paris - Part 5**

 _An alternate for Season Seven and beyond following on from 6.18 – Game Change_

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 _Conde, Paraíba, Brazil, January 7, 2032_

Being sixty five was something Michael Westen had _never_ expected to experience.

As a fifteen year old, he was confident his father would somehow manage to kill him first, probably by accident, though the old man would certainly have started out intending to hurt if not kill him.

As a twenty five year old, he lived with the daily possibility that his chosen profession could get him killed at any time. Going from the Rangers to the CIA had hardly been less hazardous.

As a thirty year old, he had almost been killed when his former mentor had blown up the factory he was in whilst trying to stop the older man's latest scheme. He'd thought Larry was dead and gone.

As a forty year old, he had almost been blown up again, which would have probably been a mercy, because Fiona had been ready to kill him in that hotel basement in Germany and almost had.

As a fifty five year old, he was already dead as far as the rest of the world was concerned. He was already three cover ID's away from being the martyred spy. Victor Roshenko, Mikhail Zolnerowich and Juan César Benítez Amodeo had all come between Michael Westen and the man he was now.

At sixty five years old, Miguel Cruz was the happily married father of three children, the former guardian of his nephew, the owner of a successful auto repair shop and manager of a 12-acre ranch.

 _He had everything he'd never dreamed of getting and everything he'd never known he wanted._

"Miguel, your dinner is ready. I made your favorite," his auburn haired beloved had informed him as she had curled up in his lap. He'd been sitting in his shop at his workbench, tinkering with bug.

There were various listening devices placed throughout the house and the property his eldest daughter managed, which provided overnight eco-tours and demonstrations of agro-forestry in action. The farm supplied some of their nutritional and financial needs and kept Gaby well occupied.

"Will you be serving it naked?" he asked before kissing her passionately.

Instead of his usual morning meal of a yogurt smoothie and some fresh local fruit, breakfast in bed for his birthday had consisted of pão d'água, a specialty bread crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, served warm and fresh with guava paste and mozzarella cheese — a combination popularly known as "Romeo and Juliet." The aroma of the strong black coffee and cream that accompanied the repast was enough to get his eyes opened and the sight of his woman carrying the tray into their bedroom wearing nothing but a smile was sufficient to truly get his interest and soon had other parts of his anatomy standing at attention too, which she'd then lavished great care upon.

 _It had been a very, very good morning indeed,_ the memory bringing a pleased smirk to his features.

"Don't be silly. We're having dinner with the children," she laughed, smacking him in the shoulder before she leaned in again. "You need to save some of your strength for later," whispered his wife before she nipped at his earlobe. "I have a very special gift for you that you'll want to eat in private."

Her hot breath could still send chills down his spine and did before she slipped off his legs and then offered her hand. He paused a second, running a rough palm on the back of his neck, remembering who would normally have been sitting in the workshop watching over him from her perch up in the rafters, and feeling the faint scars that Ma's _affectionate_ attacks had left on his head and shoulders.

He gave Fernanda's digits a gentle squeeze as they walked, fingers entwined, back towards their large ranch house in the hills above the town of Conde. There was a breeze in the air that made the summer heat more bearable. After all these years in South America, the thought of the holidays and his birthday not being in the middle of winter was still something the ex-spy part of him never had quite wrapped his head around. He had spent the majority of his life in the northern hemisphere.

"Papa, your food is getting cold!" the voice of his middle daughter rang out from somewhere within the house, drawing a giggle from his mate.

"She's _your_ daughter…" Her bright smile was full of adoration.

"Papa, we're going to send the dogs after you!" the voice of his only son chimed in.

"And he's _your_ son," he countered as they approached the white block and red clay barrel tile roofed manor house that had been their home for over a decade. The dogs were indeed barrelling towards them, the two Belgium shepherds now barking their greetings as they ran to their masters.

"No, he's _our_ son," Señora Cruz corrected. "And after dinner, once you've opened your presents, Elias is going with _your_ daughter over to _my daughter's_ camp site to spend the night and get it ready for the touristas after our long holiday break." Her face was alight with mischief and the promises of more good things to _come_ as it were. "So, the sooner you get cleaned up and eat, the sooner they will be on their way and we will be _all alone_ again."

Then she bussed him quickly on the end of his nose and sashayed her way back into the house while he stood there gazing appreciatively at the sway of her hips and hair _. Twice in one day…?_ He was grinning at the thought and somehow Sam Axe's soliloquy on the blessings of little blue pills drifted through his brain. He chuckled lightly. His esposa had been all the aphrodisiac _he_ had ever needed.

"And I'm going to put you in a head lock and drag you to the table if you don't hurry up, Papa!"

 _Yep, his oldest girl was truly her mother's daughter in every conceivable way._

Miguel Cruz emerged from the pool deck, where he had left his work boots and the two canines, padding into the kitchen in his stocking feet. Washing his hands at the sink, he observed with a smile the assembled crowd around the large table on the other side of the island. His daughter Amanda and his son Elias sat on the side closest to him, while his daughter Gabrielle and her intended Paolo sat on the other. The auburn haired temptress who had captured his heart decades ago was waiting at one end of the highly polished oak slab for him to take his seat at the other end.

"Feliz aniversário, Sr. Cruz," Sr. Alvares greeted the man to his right as the older man approached, the first in a chorus of birthday well wishes from his family. The young hombre was nothing if not respectful and well mannered. Miguel was actually pleased to have his daughter's fiancé join them.

Paolo Alvares was a tall, deeply tanned, dark haired youth in his early 20's from a large, wealthy family in Rio with a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro who was working on what would be considered a masters degree in the USA. He had been thoroughly vetted by Sam Axe's good old buddy network and completely researched by every intelligence agency to which Jesse and Dani Porter had access. He was what he seemed and, being from a rich family in Brazil, he understood security measures and confidentiality in way most Americans outside of the intelligence communities ever would. He had been a marvellous match.

 _Not that he had felt that way about him in the beginning_ , Sr. Cruz recalled as he took his seat at the head of the table and tried to remember to bless the food before digging into the mouth-watering offering that his lovely bride had prepared for his special landmark birthday. In less than a year, the pair had gone from acquaintances to colleagues to fiancées. Their courtship had been far more direct than her parents' relationship, a fact that had bothered her father and amused his wife, who enjoyed needling her spouse about Gaby's man having his priorities straight at such an early age.

Fernanda smiled as everyone around the table stopped talking and tucked into the meal before them. Getting the seed-encrusted seared tuna steak cooked just right and then pairing it with lemon tahini sauce that matched with the micro greens from the garden as well as the fish was a bit of artistry in her opinion. Fiona Glenanne's cooking skills may have been spotty, but the woman of the house had taken great pains over the years to learn to whip up something more than a quick batch of C-4.

Unaccustomed to being home with small children, the faux Frenchwoman had distracted herself from the relative inactivity, meaning there were no guns or explosions in her life anymore, by learning how to reproduce the cuisine of her alleged ancestors as well as various Middle Eastern recipes her allegedly Russian mate tended to favor. As they beamed at each other across the table, she was sure he was recalling some of her early culinary failures, especially her attempts at borscht.

The gathering was also marked by who was not at the table. His nephew, once known as Charlie Westen and now Carlos Cruz, had been spending Christmas vacation in the States and making an almost inexplicably poor show of himself with his "cousins." Sam's granddaughters and Jesse's daughters were all put out with his attempts to speed date his way through their ranks during his stay in Miami. If Miguel hadn't discerned the cause of it, with his partner's help of course, his brother's son would have been in for an earful. It was a mercy that his mom had not been around to see how her grandson had conducted himself with their best friends' progeny. Earful would not have begun to cover what the highly opinionated Ma Cruz would've had to say about his behaviour.

"So, Marisol and Marie still going with you to the airport tomorrow?" Sr. Cruz asked before spearing a piece of the tuna. He watched his auburn-haired offspring as he chewed, so much the image of his beloved except for the jarringly short haircut she had undertaken at her betrothed's suggestion, knowing her exasperation would get the best of her in a very short amount of time.

Gaby snorted and put her fork down. " _I'm_ not picking up that—"

"Gabrielle," Paolo interrupted softly.

"Fine, I'll pick him up. I'll pick him right up off the pavement!" their eldest retorted, smacking her closed fist into her open palm for emphasis.

"So, you will spoil your time with my sister and your best friend to educate him on his failures as a man, meu coração? I think you should wait until you have your cousin back at the farm where he cannot escape you."

Miguel suppressed the smirk that was threatening to break out as that dark haired man leaned over and kissed his intended on the cheek, which drew a sound somewhere between disgust and irritation from the youngest person in the room and subsequent shoulder shove from his nearest sister. Sr. Alvarez was so much smarter when it came to handling his daughter's fiery temper than he had _ever_ been with her mother. He was sure Fernanda was thinking the same thing as their eyes locked.

"I bet you'd pound him in the airport lobby right in front of everyone, wouldn't you?" Elias chimed in, hoping to urge his easily annoyed relative back onto her course of proposed violence.

Amanda reached over and gave her brother a swat to the back of the head. "Enough."

"Papa!" the boy protested quickly, ever trying to get his sire to side with him against the 'girls.'

Miguel's youngest had greeted his older sibling's boyfriend with open arms, unlike his cousin, just for the opportunity to have another potential male ally in the house and shift the 'balance of power.'

"Less instigating, more eating, Elias," his mother cut in, looking sternly at her son.

If Papa Cruz could have been considered a very benevolent dictator of sorts, then Mama Cruz was well understood to be _The Enforcer_. There was no doubt in the minds of anyone in the room who was firmly in charge of the family. The pre-teen huffed and turned his attention back to his food.

"So, _we're_ going to visit Miami next Christmas?" his raven-haired daughter queried.

Miguel continued to eat and avoid the question. In truth, he had been opposed to Nate's son going back to visit his 'homeland,' but the young man was of age and had more than one reason to leave town and return to the States. Even after all these years, the spectre of Michael Westen was never far from his thoughts when any one of his family chose to travel outside of the safety of their _home_ country. Even taking the wife and kids on trips to the safe house on their secret island scared him.

"They probably won't want us back after what Carlos pulled," Gaby groused.

"I should think it would take a little more than that," Paolo responded evenly.

"Christmas is a long time away," the youngest added. "They'll have time to forget."

"The sooner all of you eat, the sooner I can serve dessert," their mother reminded them all.

And with that, the clan got serious about finishing their dinner. Never one for sweets, Sr. Cruz was nonetheless looking forward to the pudim de claras, a lime meringue flan that had a nice zest to it to balance out the sugar, that his _bela esposa_ always prepared on his birthdays. He was also looking forward to what would happen once the meal was done, the presents opened and the house emptied.

Having adjourned to the living area, Miguel was puzzled by the odd assembly of gifts and the knowing smirks of his familia. _That they were up to something he was certain_. He stared at the rear view mirror, the window crank, the quart of Imron, the can of 3M trim adhesive, the roll of white headliner material and the parcel his lovely bride had just sat on his lap, trying to make sense of it _. Of course, he owned a body shop. These were all things he could use in one capacity or another._

As he opened the excessively long box and felt the brush of his wife's lips on his cheek, the bearded man found himself having a flashback to a birthday from another lifetime. But instead of a bayonet, he found a chrome front bumper from what he guessed was a 70s era Ford Maverick in the package.

His son couldn't stand it any longer. "Don't you get it, Papa?"

The black haired boy began laughing hysterically, while his equally dark-tressed sister tried to simultaneously look annoyed and amused at her brother's antics as she pulled up a series of pictures on her digital camera. There, sitting on the corner lift in his shop, was a sporty little black 1970 Ford Maverick 2-door sedan with a lovely hood scoop that appeared to be in need of some _serious_ TLC. As he thumbed through the images, he wasn't sure whether to be happy or horrified at the amount of work he had ahead of him in order to restore the automobile to its former glory.

"It was Paolo's idea," Amanda declared, shuffling closer to her father on the couch.

"No, it was _Mama's_ idea," Gaby corrected. "But _Paolo_ found the car," and pride in her fiancé's accomplishment oozed from the young woman's every pore before she kissed him soundly.

"And Gustov helped us sneak it into the shop this morning," Elias added, ignoring the PDA.

Now Miguel was unsure whether he was annoyed with his head mechanic for being in on the deceit or grateful that he had gotten the _alone time_ necessary to _thoroughly enjoy_ his breakfast _and_ shower time this morning. He decided pretty quickly it was the latter and he kissed, hugged and thanked his family for the wonderful birthday before joining them to pack up the vehicles with the supplies necessary to restock Aventuras da Amazônia e Eco-tours for their next round of guests due to arrive.

()()()()()()()

Having prepared the bathroom for the activities of the evening, the now-clean man ran a towel over his wet mane and full beard. Staring at himself in the mirror for a moment, he combed over his salt and pepper whiskers and his hair, which was shot through with some hints of silver at the temples.

The latter years of his life had treated him better and, although he still worked and worked out hard, he certainly didn't abuse his body as he had in his youth. Still, he could see he was a little more solid than he used to be. His cobalt blue eyes crinkled at the corners and his teeth flashed white as he remembered discovering his wife's hidden stash of tintura para cabelo. But he had learned that some secrets were best left alone. Miguel appreciated being able to run his hands through her long auburn tresses and bury his face in them at night. _If her hair had some help, so what?_

Pondering over his beloved's beautiful locks had him thinking about his daughter's short shorn do. Gabrielle had been so thoroughly Fiona that he often joked about being kicked to the shallow end of the gene pool when it came to their oldest daughter, right down to her preference for keeping her hair long and flowing. This also meant, given her penchant to working and playing hard, her mane was almost always braided and or pinned up out of the way except when she and her family would go to the beach, into town or off to João Pessoa for a day trip for some more extensive shopping.

And contemplating about how shocked they had all been when she had cut it all off had the older man meditating on his nephew's reaction to the change. It had taken awhile, but Miguel had finally figured out that the source of the suggestion was as much the problem as the actual act of 'scalping."

It didn't matter that her hair had ended up being donated to some international charity that made wigs for pediatric cancer patients, Carlos had been offended in the extreme by her actions as well as the resulting new 'do and had told her so plainly. Madeline, whose hairstyle her granddaughter had obviously been channeling, would have had words with the boy for his attitude as well as his taste.

Miguel stretched out on the bed and relaxed, grateful for a hot shower and a chance to lie down and rest before the athletics to come. Loading up all the equipment, supplies and ordinance that would be necessary stock to the farm for another season had to been hard work even with all hands helping.

 _Paolo never questioned the extra touches his wife would add the provisions for the campsite..._ the observation drifted through his mind as he turned on his side and let out an unexpected loud yawn.

His thoughts then turned back to the spiky haired bottle-blonde who'd been the mother that he'd remembered for most of his life. While Sr. Alvares had kept his commentary to himself as he had almost seamlessly, with one notable exception, integrated himself into the Cruz clan, Mrs Westen had been anything but quiet and cooperative with the changes that brought her and Charlie to Brazil.

Once the shock of being whisked from her _in-the-process-of-burning-to-the-ground_ house in the middle of the night had worn off, Madeline had kept up a running stream of laments about the final blow in her tally of grievances: she had lost her husband, both her boys and now their home. It was Mrs Dearborn-Axe who had finally reminded her somewhat forcefully that her grandson and his well being was her priority now as the remaining Westens departed South Florida on her private yacht with her new husband at the helm, the former naval commander and ex-SEAL, Sam Axe.

When his mother had recovered from her momentary astonishment that her oldest son was in fact still alive, she'd had a surprise for him too. Trying to explain that her cover ID would require her and his nephew not to speak until their language facility was up to par, Maddie had let loose with a Cuban-accented string of Spanish expletives that had temporarily stunned her offspring into silence.

Explaining that she had undertaken Spanish classes with Charlie as a help to both of them in an increasingly Hispanic city, but also as bonding time with her newly arrived grandson, who had come to live with Madeline while Ruth was in rehab prior to her death. And there were additional skills that she had helped the boy master in order to prepare him for life better than she regretfully had prepared her children. She'd told her eldest that as she'd come to terms with his and Nate's death, though thankfully his had been staged unlike his younger brother's, she'd finally realized that wishing for it wasn't going to help them escape the reality of their lives and she'd decided she was damned well going to make sure as best as she could that Charlie was prepared to be a Westen.

That Madeline had stopped dying her hair blonde, letting it return to its original darker hue to better blend in after leaving Miami, had been met with amazement. That she insisted on embellishing on her cover story, sometimes to their detriment, had not been all that much of a bombshell. However, they had gotten over the worst of that early on in their days of establishing themselves as the Cruzes.

 _Mariana_ telling the local hair dresser that she had come to have custody of her grandson when his parents had been killed in a car accident was the official story. Elaborating details which included a Mexican cartel and a planned hit had resulted in a drug lord actually coming to silence what he had mistakenly believed to be the remaining member of another family he had murdered. _Now,_ _at least,_ Miguel could recall that incident and smile. _At the time, however_... Fernanda's pregnancy had made him highly over protective and her much more vicious than usual in dealing with the threat to their new way of life and new family home, taking the battle to them in a full-on Glenanne-style assault.

The resulting action had been enough to tide the duo over for several years to come in the adrenaline department and had taught his mother, who _had_ understood secrets, lies and evading discovery before, a valuable lesson in what it meant to live life fully undercover all the time.

But thinking about Madeline Westen's transformation into Mariana Cruz was making him sad and this was supposed to be a happy day. His wife, who was stowing the rest of her special supplies that they'd sent off with their kids, would not appreciate his moping when she finally came to bed. With the ease of decades' long practice, the former operative rolled onto his back and redirected. _It also had been some of the best sex they'd had in a few years as they had celebrated their victory over the bad guys on a very large private yacht that a certain Irish gun runner had provided for their travel_.

Miguel let his mind drift in that direction, a pleased sigh escaping his lips as the memories became more erotic. The reminiscence of the guns, the explosives and her directing the action from the sidelines, making her no less effective in her petulant deference to pregnancy, was one huge turn on.

 _The mood aboard the Celtic Dawn, a Spanish-made Astondoa luxury yacht making its way back towards Brazil under the power of three 1500hp-MTU engines, had been quite different than the one aboard Anton Yelchin's vessel when Mikhail and Josephina Zolnerwich had sailed towards their new life in Argentina. Both rooms had been lavish and she had been pregnant each time, but that was where the similarities ended. Their reunion on his assets' vessel had been slow and very sweet._

 _Their couplings on her brother's boat, which Seamus bought to welcome his sister back into the family gunrunning business back in 2003, had been a torrid affair in every sense of the word. Her sibling may have complained about the scratched and dented condition of the bed in the aft guest room with a twinkle in his eye, but he had expected payment for the damage nonetheless._

 _Fernanda had insisted on overseeing the storage of the guns, the ammo, the detonators and the C-4, ensuring that her personal cut of that stash ended up in her state room. He had no more than put the bags down when she had knocked him over the raised railing that surrounded the bed, crashing into the mattress and cutting the highly polished wood with their combat boots and cargo pants._

 _Miguel had been wearing a lucky shirt from another man's Ranger days and knew what was coming next. He quickly flipped her on her back and pinned her hands above her head in an effort to save the garment from being shredded. Using his body weight to hold the rest of the fiery wildcat down, he was going to explain what was on his mind when the craving to kiss her overwhelmed him. As he latched onto her mouth with an almost bruising passion, the dance of dominance began in earnest._

 _So, it was stupid on his part… truly… not to predict what would happen. Having rightly discerned that the thirty five year old government issue uniform top with a near miss bullet hole was in danger of being destroyed, he should have been smart enough to realize that his lover, hormone-crazed, fresh from a battle she'd had to orchestrate off sides, frustrated but flush with victory, was not going to accept being subjugated by him in that particular moment. But the pain of the sharp bite to his lower lip took him by surprise nonetheless and then the battle of the boudoir was_ really _on._

 _Sr. Cruz found himself hamstrung by competing compulsions: his desire for supremacy in their intimate struggle and his concern for her condition. It proved his undoing, as his wife had no such inhibitions. As they wrestled across the bedding, nipping alternating with kissing, caresses turning into grappling, it was inevitable that they ended up off the raised platform and onto the floor, the dents in the railing coming as he was forced to take the blow to his back and cradle her to his chest._

 _The air went out of him with a grunt, but he held his beloved tighter still as she tried to free herself. He rolled off of her and onto his toes, unbuttoning the garment as fast as he dared while she slowly got to her feet. The light of fight in her eyes and wicked grin that graced her lips was enthralling._

" _Just trying to save—"_

" _I get it," she purred as she sauntered towards him, grasping the neck of her own T-shirt and ripping it completely in two and swiftly thumbing open the front hook her bra in one motion. "But I'm getting tired of waiting," Fernanda complained as his orbs locked on her fuller, rounder breasts._

 _Then the bearded man was discarding his olive drab over shirt and his own T-shirt as he stalked towards his mate, walking her backwards to the bed before turning her around. Instantly, his hands were unfastening the opening of her cargo pants and then the black clothing was around her knees along with her throng. Miguel dropped his own fatigues just as quickly and then she was pressed up against his back, his erection pushing into her backside as he wrapped her in his arms, palming the soft mounds of flesh while his thumbs and forefingers rolled her sensitive nipples between them._

 _She let out a loud moan, reaching back for him, then she found herself bent over at the waist. The not quite to lithe woman landed with her palms on the bed. Her lover's hands disappeared from her body temporarily as the dark haired man maneuvred into position and then he was pushing into her, gently at first and next with increasing tempo and force, his hands digging in her hips. Miguel didn't want to stop and then found that he couldn't...the sight of long auburn hair spread over her naked back, her beautiful bare bottom cradling him as she received each thrust in her tight, hot..._

 _He was losing himself to his orgasm far sooner than he had intended, the white out of pleasure exploding from their intimate connection and singing out along every nerve in his body. He collapsed onto her form with a gasp and a groan, his weight almost knocking her down to the bed._

 _Knowing that he had finished before she had, her lover enfolded her in his embrace once again, one hand sliding into the warm, wet folds between her trembling legs and the other alternating between her hardened peaks, caressing and pinching as he worked his magic with his fingers. Fernanda came screaming his name as she shook with her own bliss. Feeling her walls flutter around his member as she came down from her high flooded him with happiness and contentment. He didn't want to withdraw from that place of intimacy. The life they had made together moved under his-_

"Starting without me?"

Miguel was momentarily disoriented. His auburn haired lover was sitting on the bed next to him, her small perfect digits gently caressing his thigh adjacent to the substantial bulge in his dark navy blue pajama bottoms. He realized he must have dozed off while he was waiting for her. Her hand drifted away from his body to tug on the hem of the pajama top that was the mate to the pants he was wearing. Only a couple of buttons, strategically fastened, were holding the front closed.

"No, that's something I can't do without you," the raven haired man told her with a smile, echoing her words from another lifetime. It sounded almost funny to his ears saying it now in Portuguese.

"A good dream then?" she queried.

"Hmmm, a good memory…" he amended and made an exaggerated show of stretching.

"Well, if you're not too tired…" His wife leaned over and kissed the exposed skin between his belly button and the waistband of his sleep pants. "…We could make another one."

He raised himself up onto his elbows and Fernanda met him the rest of the way, latching her mouth onto his in a slow, almost languid kiss, and then running her hand up his spine and into his dark hair.

The cold of his beloved's grasp caused the man to push up quickly into a sitting position. Pulling back, he looked into her eyes with the question plain in his as Miguel tried to shake off the chill.

"I brought you a very special little surprise birthday present," she explained, releasing the black strands to gesture with her now freed fingers to the two white objects on the nightstand by the bed.

It took him a minute to process what he was looking at. It had been so long since he'd actually seen one that he swung around and scooted past her on the mattress to get a better look at the containers.

"Brenner's blueberry yogurt?" the former Miami native whispered in English, rising to his feet as he reached out to pick up the cooled carton before turning it over in his grasp almost disbelievingly.

The ex-operative had been ridiculously cautious about ensuring every detail of their new cover identities were maintained, such that anything, clothing, food, drink, entertainment, household cleaning products, even chemical signatures on explosives, were whatever would have been obtained by local means and could in no way be used to tie them back to their previous lives.

As such, Sr. Cruz had been consuming the wildly popular Brazilian-made yogurt for the last twelve years. Unfortunately, Ati Latte was thinner than the creamier treat he had grown accustomed to eating during his years in the US, Europe and the Middle East, hence all the smoothies in the AM.

And it didn't come in blueberry either.

"How did you-?" _Brenner's was from one of the last local diaries in the greater Miami area and the product had a very limited distribution._

"Don't worry. That shipment had better security than the last batch of C-4 I purchased."

She patted the bed next to her and then he noticed her other hand was holding two silver teaspoons.

"Don't try to use that can of Imron; it was actually a dummy container to hold the liquid coolant to keep the yogurt cold," she advised. "I had it included in the shipment with all the parts for your new car. The Taylor Brothers were more than happy to fulfil such a profitable order from a new buyer in Puerto Rico."

He stopped opening the lid midway and stared at her wide-eyed momentarily. "You used the—"

"Not me, your nephew."

 _What the hell_ was very plainly written all over his face, so he didn't need to say it.

"He felt bad about the way he'd treated the girls, especially _your best friends'_ girls, especially the people who'd helped him get out of Miami. So he's been running covert contrition operations. This one was your apology slash birthday present. I'll let Carlos tell you the details when he gets back."

She reached over and pulled the aluminium foil the rest of the way off the cup.

"Don't worry. Sam, Jesse, Dani and I all approved of the op before it ever got underway. I didn't want to spoil the surprise, but they've been very forgiving and he's learned quite a bit of tradecraft."

Miguel was clearly torn between wanting to enjoy the tasty treat and being concerned about how it was obtained as well as the reasons why young Carlos needed to do it to apologize for anything.

"Oh, I see, you've never been so hurt by what you thought was a betrayal by someone you love that you repeatedly did something insensitive, inconsiderate and generally stupid because of it?"

Fernanda's voice carried an edge, simultaneously apologizing from her past actions and accusing him of his own misdeeds so as to remind him that his nephew was much younger than they had been back then. His own heart stuttered in his chest as he remembered _offering her all the yogurt she could eat for a tactical favor because his charms no longer worked on her_... _and then she had-_

He quickly slammed the lid shut on that box of memories and offered her an apologetic smile.

"We _were_ different people, different names... different lives back then... _very_ different..."

She dipped the spoon into the open cup he held in his grasp, as she had then. Only this time she held the spoon to his lips instead of eating it herself. "Not all memories are good ones, are they?"

Her husband took the pre-offered bite, letting the flavor of the long lost sustenance melt on his tongue as he closed his eyes and forcefully focused on all the happy recollections he had of eating blueberry yogurt with the woman sitting next to him, _of eating this very brand of yogurt off of-_

The auburn haired beauty watched as his blue orbs opened, now glowing with contentment and something more heated, his deeply satisfied smile turning slowly into a lascivious grin.

"Let's just stick with the ones that have happy endings, shall we?" she suggested brightly as his lover took the next portion from the cup and spread it in a thin line across the exposed flesh of her clavicle as she shrugged the pajama top off her shoulder.

"I can't think of a better way to enjoy this rare and fine birthday present," Miguel agreed before he leaned over and licked the creamy substance from her skin with a broad stroke of his tongue.

"I seem to recall a time that we bathed before dessert was served. At least we'll get it right this time," and she giggled as he swiped the cup over her chin, leaving a little purple glob there before sucking it away with a slurp.

"Practice makes perfect," he agreed with a white flash of teeth.

"I suppose... we haven't done _this_ in awhile..." She slipped the two buttons loose and let the silk material slid from her shoulders and onto the bed. "We might ruin your nice pajamas... I'd hate it if I couldn't get the stains out because we got too messy..."

"A complete tragedy," he assented and then set the carton back onto the bedside table before standing and doffing his own half of the nightwear. "Though I'm surprised you're not worried about the sheets this time..."

"Don't be silly. I wouldn't ruin a set of 800 thread count linens. I changed the bedding this afternoon," Fernanda advised, running an appreciative eye over his naked form. The lust in those blue green pools sent a fire rushing throughout his body before centering his and her attention on his rapidly enlarging manhood.

"I'm not sure who's going to enjoy this more," she purred. Filling her mouth with the chilly concoction before encompassing his member from tip to base and sucking hard, she drew a yelp from her husband as the temperature differential caused him to jump.

"That could actually be counter- productive," he informed her with a shiver. "Cold is not conducive to what you're trying to accomplish, my love." The bearded man pushed onto her back, leaving her top half on the mattress and her legs dangling over the edge. "Besides, it's my birthday. _I_ get to have _my_ very favorite flavor."

With that, Sr. Cruz began painting a very artistic mural, considering he was using yogurt as the medium and his wife's body as the canvas. When he was finished laying the purple fluff in symmetrical swirls and swoops on both sides of her tanned and toned frame, Miguel stepped back and admired his creativity while savoring several more bites from the cup.

"It's getting in my hair," she complained lightly as he looked down at his handiwork, a wide toothy grin on his hirsute face.

"Can't have that," he agreed, setting the remainder of the cup on the floor well away from her feet before climbing onto the mattress, straddling her perpendicular to her form. Miguel worked his way from her right side to the left, nibbling and lapping his way across her shoulders with a long pause in the middle to attack the slender column of her throat with tiny scraps of his teeth too.

By the time her lover had finished cleaning the flesh in between before encompassing her breasts with his mouth, paying special attention to her impossibly tight nipples, Fernanda was already writhing with impatient anticipation for the main event. As such, Miguel decided to _really_ take his time licking his way down her tautly held abdominal muscles to the spot right below her navel.

The dark haired man gave her an even wider smile as he slid off the bed and settled between her limbs, running his thumbs lightly over her inner thighs as she draped her legs over his shoulders.

"In a hurry?" he smirked as he spooned the last of the carton over her bare sex. That part of her anatomy had remained hairless since the birth of their second child and it had become his privilege to keep it that way. Fernanda for her part always found herself chuckling at the inversion of the no longer clean shaven face meeting her naked flesh where once there resided a tiny strip of soft curls.

That is, until her lover eventually had her gasping for breath and seeing stars.

Miguel found himself lost in a moment of time when the mingling of these tastes on his tongue that he loved the most was not a rare and uncommon occurrence and he revelled in the happiness of living long enough with the woman he loved beyond reason to come to this moment as his wife came hard with two of his names, one shouted, one whispered on her lips.

Her husband stroked over her now sticky flesh with gentle hands and light kisses until her muscles stopped trembling while she attempted to get her breathing back under control.

"Come here," she requested as she patted the cheaper comforter she'd chosen for this occasion.

"With pleasure," the man agreed, climbing onto the bed and trying not to bump his raging erection into anything too solid as they shifted around on the mattress, which ended with him lying on his back as he had been when she'd first awoken him and her straddling him parallel to his large frame.

There was a problem when it came to certain sexual acts for the couple. Whether she was admitting to being Irish, French or South American, the woman in question was a full head shorter than her loving spouse and as such the classic "69" was not a position that worked well for them in terms of mutual oral contact. Nevertheless, that didn't stop Fernanda from trying and the results were always very interesting in her beloved's opinion.

And he never complained about the view regardless.

Perhaps it was the visual that was responsible for what happened next as she set about on her elbows and knees, her hardened peaks grazing his stomach, her ankles around his ears, while she drizzled and suckled the last of the no longer cold dairy product from his manhood. It caught them both by surprise when the petite woman suddenly found herself with purple and white creamy substances on her face and in her hair.

And as much as he wanted to apologize for the mess, Miguel Cruz found himself rendered speechless by one of the most unanticipated orgasms he'd had recently. If that was the price of getting older, he supposed there were worse things that could have happened to him.

"I have a surprise _for you_ ," he called out when he could speak again, as she'd climbed off the mattress, giggling now that she had gotten over the momentary shock, and headed into the loo.

"I think you already gave me one," Sra. Cruz laughed and then came to a halt at the bathroom door.

The room was chilly, which was unusual for this time of year, but there was a heat coming from the garden tub on the left side of the room. A swirl of lavender-scented bubbles moved around the surface of the steamy water. Her husband had converted the bath into a mini-hot tub several years ago as a 60th birthday present for his beloved and, although he was still a shower man through and through, even he had confessed to enjoying the benefits of immersion in heated liquid that was being moved around by multiple little air jets on sore muscles and aching joints.

"I was thinking we might enjoy your birthday present together," he said as he walked up behind her, his strong arms slipping around her waist and pulling their bodies together. "Which got me thinking about the first time we shared a bath…" his voice dropped low as he brought his mouth close to her ear. "Of course, I had to cool the room down if I was going to recreate the Braeside Inn in Derry."

His bride inhaled deeply. "Ya got tha scent right and everythin' except I don' think tha water wa' tha warm and I seem ta remember ya had ta be prodded ta get into tha tub thot day," she whispered in her lilting accent of another lifetime ago.

"Aye, I wa' a bit thick back then," Michael McBride agreed quietly, proving again that he did remember _everything_ the Irishwoman had ever said to him. "Good thing you didn't give up on me," Miguel Cruz declared en Portuguese as he walked them both to the side of the tub before taking her hand as she stepped into the warmed water.

He retrieved the shampoo, soap and a cloth from the shower enclosure before settling in behind her.

"Let's get you cleaned up."

He handed her the sudsy cloth and poured handfuls of liquid over her hair while she washed her face. Fernanda dipped her head back and saturated the long locks before he could push her under the surface, as she knew what was probably coming. Her lover hummed a tune she eventually recognized as a bosso nova jazz classic as he applied her favorite product and massaged it through, pushing on her shoulders when he was done to let her know she should rinse out, and then wrung out the auburn tresses. With a contented sigh, his wife leaned her damp head back against his chest.

"Better now?"

"Better," she concurred. "I hope you enjoyed your birthday."

"Thoroughly," he assured her. "Most thoroughly… Don't tell the kids that I liked Charlie's present more than the car. They'll never forgive me."

"It'll be our little secret."

"We've had a few of those…" he mused. "Want to know another one?"

She hummed a positive sound and kissed the underside of his furry chin before nuzzling his earlobe.

"From the first time I saw your picture, from the first night I saw you in that pub in Dublin, from the first time we danced the night away, I was addicted… and terrified…because I was addicted."

He thought about all the things he had done over the last thirty five years since he had first laid eyes on the petite redhead who had undeniably captured his heart, regardless of what his head had thought and all the heartache they had caused each other over all those years. "And now…."

"Now?" she echoed breathlessly.

"And now I have everything I never dreamed of getting and everything I never knew I wanted."

He drew her in for a soft, deep kiss while she threaded her hands through his long, dark damp hair.

Michael Westen would never have allowed himself to be this happy and the world always found a way to interfere even on the rare occasions he had. But Miguel Cruz was a much older and wiser man, who learned to fight his battles on a less global scale, and who had gained happiness along with that wisdom. As they broke apart, her husband cupped her cheek, rubbing his calloused thumb over her soft skin and smiling at her with all the adoration in his heart.

"Because I have the woman I love more than all the gold at the end of the rainbow," he told his beloved before drawing her in for another long, languid kiss that turned increasingly passionate.

And the bath water got very cold indeed before either of them noticed.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** _This is the sixth part of the 7.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 13 in "Reconnecting."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **7.01 AU - We'll Always Have Paris - Part 6**

 _An alternate for Season Seven and beyond following on from 6.18 – Game Change_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Conde, Paraíba, Brazil, March 2032_

Unsurprisingly, Carlos Cruz who was once known as Charlie Westen was in trouble again.

Having managed to piss off Noelle and Nicole Porter, Kate and June Dearborn, and their respective parents and grandparents at Christmas, his nephew had undertaken a campaign of well-coordinated apologies and gestures of contrition, including supplying him with some much missed Brenner's blueberry yogurt that had contributed greatly to one of his best birthdays ever in recent memory.

Miguel was now sitting on _his_ side of the bed, which hadn't changed since they had started sharing one back in Dublin back in the day, and getting into his pajamas after a hot shower and a long day.

That thought about long cold winter nights long ago spent snuggled up with an Irish spitfire brought another smile to his face and he wondered briefly what was keeping his beloved from joining him.

The rehearsal dinner had been a tense affair, where he had felt more like an operative than he had in years. Keeping a close eye on all the attendees, looking more to head off potential family drama than security breaches, had kept him occupied. Meeting Sr. and Sra. Alvarez again required a certain amount of charm on his part, as well as his bela esposa putting on her finest performance.

The ex-spy wasn't worried any longer about whether or not their identities as the Cruzes would pass the scrutiny of whatever background checks the Alvarez family had performed on them. If they hadn't questioned their authenticity during the last year, they were unlikely to do it now right before the wedding of their son to his daughter. His friend and fellow former spook, Eduardo Antonio Souza, whom he'd known in Russia as Vladimir Kozlov, had used his recent contacts in the Brazilian intelligence community to back up whatever covers his friends in Miami had put in place.

Miguel laid back on the mattress, putting his arms behind his head as he often did, thinking about the unlikely alliance that had formed between them that day in a pediatrician's office of all places.

The sound of Fernanda and Gabrielle's voices wafted in from the living room. Neither was being particularly quiet. Elias was sleeping the guesthouse, what once had been his mother's residence on the ranch, with his older cousin Carlos, who had wisely chosen to stay out of the main house and avoid the wrath of the women therein. Paolo and his sister Marisol had gone back to the hotel with their parents and Gaby's _melhor amiga_ Marie Souza was hiding out on the pool deck with his younger daughter, Amanda, whilst the two firebrands of the family hashed out just who was at fault.

Somehow, coming of age seemed to bring all of Nate's bad luck and bad judgement to rest on his offspring. Truth be told, Miguel didn't really think it was the younger man's fault this time. Like his father, Carlos had managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.

It hadn't helped that his nephew was still working through his issues with Gabrielle and her almost husband when they had come with Paolo's sister and Gaby's best friend in tow to pick him up at the airport upon his return from Miami. Thinking that the extra people in the room would deflect her fiery temper might have been a sound strategy in theory, but it did not work out that way in practice.

 _In battle, not even the best laid plans survive contact with the enemy._

Maybe it was just something in the Westen DNA that made everyone carrying a Y-chromosome susceptible to being overwhelmed by XX-Glenanne DNA.

" _You're full of it, Michael. Elias is_ your _son and he doesn't listen to anybody, especially not Fiona."_

" _Okay, you got me there, Ma." For some inexplicable reason, he wasn't surprised to find himself sitting in his mother's living room back in Miami. It all made perfect sense and he was perfectly happy to be talking with her, something that rarely happened in the house on North River Drive._

" _You have a beautiful family, Michael," she said, taking a deep drag off her cigarette. The fact that Madeline had quit smoking when she relocated to South America and had become Marianna Cruz didn't seem incongruous with the current setting. "I was always so worried about you and Fiona."_

" _Yeah… it would have never worked there. You know that, right?" He looked over at where she was seated next to him on the couch, the smell of tobacco more of a remembrance than a reality._

" _I know, honey. I'm glad you were able to work it out in the end." His mother patted him on the kneecap. "I'm sorry that I never could make things right for you when you were growing up."_

" _It's alright, Ma." His brow furrowed. "We've talked about this before. I'm okay with—"_

" _I know, Michael," Madeline sighed and her smile was sad. "I was just never okay with it. But I'm so happy for you now. Look at you… as old as I was then…" and the bottle blonde's expression brightened considerably as she chuckled. "Never thought I'd see the day…"_

" _Me neither," he agreed, wondering why he was forty five again instead of sixty five for a second._

 _She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "I wanted to tell you something. It's important."_

 _Again, the affection which was rare in their early lives flowed naturally between them and he didn't think it odd at all. They had made up. They had put the past behind them and moved on happily._

" _Don't be too hard on Charlie. He's just trying to find his place in the world. He was almost nine years old before he moved to Brazil. He was old enough to remember his past. He's old enough to have questions about his parents and his life has been turned upside down again. Go easy on him."_

" _Would you have gone easy on him?" her son inquired with a grin, knowing the answer full well._

 _His mother took another drag from her cigarette and blew a white plume into the air. "Okay,_ you _got_ me _there, Michael," she responded with a smile. "But I would have gone easy on him after I made sure he would never do something like that again. Sometimes, he's still too much like Nate."_

" _That's not always a bad thing," he countered mildly, missing his brother for a moment. "Are you two happy here?"_

" _We're good here, honey. You go on and enjoy the rest of your life. You have everything to live for. Just remember what I said about Charlie, okay?"_

"Miguel?"

In a disorienting realignment of his senses, Sr. Cruz suddenly found himself back in his bed in Brazil with his beautiful bride standing over him, shaking his shoulder with a look of concern etched on her face. Then she sat on the edge of the mattress and leaned forward to press a kiss to his forehead before thumbing the wetness away from his cheeks he didn't even know was there.

"You fell asleep, old man," Fernanda teased gently. "You must have been dreaming."

His wife knew even after all these years that the man she loved still had nightmares sometimes. On the plus side, Miguel usually sought to find his surcease at his woman's side and not by searching for a sidearm under his pillow these days. The guns had moved to the headboard a while back.

"I saw my mom…" he paused, still momentarily befuddled. "She came for a visit. She wanted to tell me not to be so hard on, Char—Carlos."

"oh…" was all she could think of in response. After a beat, Sra. Cruz leaned down again, her mostly auburn hair making a curtain between them and the rest of the world, and kissed him softly.

"I love you," she whispered as she broke contact, reaching over with a free hand to surreptitiously turn off the small lamp on the nightstand.

The still dark haired man threaded his hands through her long tresses, pushing them away from her face as his work roughened palms cradled her cheeks. "I love you too, more than all the gold…."

"At the end of the rainbow," she finished for her husband. "We have a long day tomorrow. We-"

"Then come to bed," Miguel requested, pulling her down on top of him and then shifting them both around until she was tucked securely next to his side as he lay in the center of the bed. Her man let out a contented sigh as his wife's hand stroked over his not nearly flat stomach and kissed his chest.

Sometime later, as he drifted in and out of slumber, basking in the feeling of contentment that came with being able to snuggle up to Fernanda and soak up her warmth almost every night, he heard…

" _Good night, honey…"_

"Good night, Ma," he answered quietly as he was quite sure the love of his life was asleep.

()()()()()()()()

"I'm going to finish getting everything set up, Miguel."

Her voice drifted out of the bathroom and brought a broad grin to his bearded face. Despite how ready _he was_ to be done with all the preparation for his daughter's _second_ wedding, this was the one part he had greatly anticipated. The house was quiet and they were all alone. Their new in-laws had gone back to their home in Rio while Carlos and Maria were sharing rooms with Elias and Amanda respectively at the Maria Bonita Hotel where the first wedding had been held earlier today.

So, after an extensive shopping trip in João Pessoa for their upcoming jaunt to Brazil's most famous city, the foursome had elected to spend the rest of their day hanging around town before heading back to the beach for the night. They would return in the morning to finish packing up to depart. Carlos was doing his best to demonstrate how responsible he really was by chaperoning the outing.

Gabrielle and Paolo had opted to have their first night at the Pousada Tambaba Naturista, the only place to stay within Tambaba's naturism area. The owners, naturists themselves, had become good friends of theirs during their stay at Brazil's only nude beach. Miguel chuckled softly, remembering how his mother and his wife had conspired together to 'loosen him up' for his sixtieth birthday. Marianna had taken charge of the ranch for the week, not that anyone but Elias actually needed watching, and he had been whisked off to an unknown destination with only minimal trepidation.

Hildebrando and Rair had been instrumental in assisting Sr. Cruz in overcoming his utter aversion to being in the buff in public. If there was no good place to hide a gun in a bathing suit, there was _absolutely nowhere_ to hide one wearing a towel that was meant to be dropped the moment one arrived at the beach. Fernanda's generous application of sunscreen to the vulnerable parts of his anatomy that had virtually never seen the sun also had a lot to do with easing his discomfort.

With his beloved by his side, and surreptitiously carrying her favorite H&K and some prepared C-4 in a secret compartment of the beach bag that was never far away, the former spy finally managed to relax enough to enjoy the sun, sand and surf au natural, for the day anyway. Outside of the _very private_ section of the shoreline that had been reserved for them, they spent most of their time in their bungalow or having meals with the owners in their reserved portion of the restaurant. His alcohol consumption, which had almost ceased after he had ceased to be _Juan César,_ had spiked on that trip.

With another light laugh, Miguel finished doffing his clothing, laying his white linen trousers on the chest at the foot of the bed atop the muscle shirt and matching jacket already there. He hadn't worn that much custom made cotton since his clubbing days of his misspent youth. Fernanda had looked beautiful in her sleeveless floaty ivory sun dress that hugged her hips without upstaging the bride.

"I'm almost ready," she informed him from the other room.

"Just making sure all the clothes are hung up before they wrinkle," he answered back, sighing heavily as he moved to put their wedding attire on a hangar and stared at the high dollar clothing encased in garment bags for their trip to the airport to catch the midday flight.

Because while Fernanda had been more than happy with the service performed by Father Ferreira, the priest from Matriz Nossa Senhora de Lourdes which was the Catholic orphanage she had championed since her son had been unexpectedly born there twelve years ago, the sensibilities of Sra. Alvarez demanded a high church wedding with communion, candles, a choir and a cadre of altar boys and _she_ was more than happy to pay for it, if that was what it required to make it happen.

However, his father and Paolo were far more sensitive to the feelings of Sr. Cruz in the matter. The younger Sr. Alvarez had even gone to the trouble of asking for Gabrielle's hand in marriage prior, much to her irritation, but her fiancé had refused to be disrespectful to her papa in both instances.

Miguel had informed them most politely that he and his wife would be amenable to such a thing if certain conditions for the service and for the reception were met. He had explained carefully that his employer was very security conscious and, as such, he was not permitted to participate in things that might result in himself or his family being publically photographed. So, if they could keep the _entire_ affair private… But as it turned out, a noisy public spectacle complete with paparazzi was _not_ on the elder Sr. Alvarez's to-do list either, despite what Sra. Alvarez might have wanted.

He walked into the en suite to find his woman where he'd anticipated, sitting on the long silestone countertop he had personally installed to the left of the large sink with all her shaving implements to the right. The master bath had been the first thing he had remodelled upon taking possession of the ranch. He'd installed a large hook in the ceiling to hold hanging plants, except on occasions such as this, when it held a sling for Fernanda to use so as not to strain her back whilst he was performing his _delicate maintenance_ responsibilities. It had other equally pleasurable uses as well that often went in conjunction with removing the hair from the lower half of her body.

"I thought maybe you fell asleep on me again," she teased. Reclining on the vanity wearing just a bright smile, the redhead reached up with her left arm, pulling him down for a long, languid kiss whilst her right hand slipped off her stomach and onto his before sliding lower to encompass him.

His large rough hands glided over her whole body as her smaller ones stroked through his hair and over his manhood with delicate playful touches that turned increasingly determined. After a few moments of kissing and caressing, they broke apart with a needy groan and a delighted moan.

"I'm never going to get this done if you keep distracting me," he muttered low in her ear.

"But distracting you is so much fun."

"You won't think so," he advised as he began to spread the white edible shaving cream she'd found online from the top of her knee over her left thigh. "If I nick you while I'm doing this."

"Probably not," Fernanda agreed.

He leaned in and kissed her before beginning the task of dragging the razor upwards over the lean muscles and tanned skin. Miguel worked quickly with the ease of years of skilful practice.

"So, why didn't we take care of all of this yesterday?" he queried, rinsing out the blade in the white enamel sink before continuing.

"We didn't have time to do it properly." She stroked a hand along his back as he leaned over to do the work. "And I only needed my calves- Ow!" she complained as she pinched his backside.

"I told you not to distract me…" He licked over the miniscule wound and then kissed it better.

"I'm going to enjoy making you pay for that," his auburn haired woman warned.

"I sincerely hope so," he grinned, spreading the foam on her right leg.

"Be careful what you wish for, Miguel." Her smile was mischievous and caused further stirrings in his nether regions imagining all the things she could do to him as he continued stroking that sharp instrument ever so carefully over her flesh.

"So you need to shave everything for this dress you're wearing on Saturday? I'm intrigued."

The dark haired man took a wet cloth and ran it from her toes to her hips to remove any traces of the remaining cream or hair.

"I won't even be able to wear a bra," she purred, splaying her limbs open, giving him room to work as he applied the fluffy substance over the V between her legs.

While Fiona Glenanne had gone without a bra for the majority of her stay in Miami, Fernanda Cruz had discovered some side benefits as well as draw backs from having and nursing three children. As such, she hadn't gone about sans undergarments in a while.

Miguel dipped his head down to show her how much he liked the thought of a dress that tight as he covered her breasts with what was on his hands, massaging the pliant, more ample flesh before removing the coconut-flavored stuff with broad laps of his tongue and giving special attention to the stiffened peaks. Fernanda growled as he drove her wild, her fingers carding through his long, shaggy dark hair while his tongue swirled and his teeth nipped lightly.

When he pulled back, she chuckled at all the snowy residue that was smeared into his beard, adding to the color contrast. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he laughed too.

"I'll take care of that later," he assured her. "Right now, I have something more important to do."

Taking his time, her husband slowly stroked the encased blade over the outer flesh of her womanhood, being particularly careful around the places where the folds met. Sra. Cruz knew she had to hold very still or risk getting cut. The tension of wanting to move and not being able to was making her crazy, as it always did. She was bucking into his hand as he wiped the last traces of downy hair and cream off of her aching mound with the warm soft cloth.

"There, all done. You deserve a reward for being such a good girl."

Miguel swung his wife's legs over his shoulders, turning her body in the straps that made up the black nylon sling while he dropped to his knees in front of the vanity. He plunged his tongue into her center and then drug it slowly up, lapping over her most intimate place, pausing to add to the pressure while she writhed on the countertop. Her lover had only to repeat the process a few times before her limbs were tightened around his head, her breath coming in harsh gasps and he knew she was _there_. He rose up quickly, pulling her towards him as he buried himself in her warm wets folds.

As he took hold of her hips, Fernanda wrapped her lithe legs around his waist. She leaned back in the mini hammock and then lifted to meet each thrust of his pelvis. Watching as his member was encompassed in her body, feeling her sheathing him fully over and over again, was more than Miguel could take for any length of time. Dimly through the haze of his own white out of pleasure, he heard her calling his name, tightening around his firm length as she found her own final release.

They collapsed onto one another. A tangle of trembling arms, shaking legs and sated bodies as they both tried to bring their breathing back under control. It took longer than it used to, recovering from their intense couplings. But that was hardly a problem that either of them minded much. It might take them a while to stop panting and move to the shower to finish up, but they would sleep well tonight entwined each in the other's tender embrace and that was all that truly mattered.

()()()()()()()

"So, what do you think?"

He had just come through the door, feeling strangely at home again in the tuxedo that very rarely came out of his closet these days, to see if they were ready to begin. The figure in the center of the room had looked at him over her bare shoulder, her blue green eyes sparkling with anticipation.

He stopped next to his beloved, who was dazzling in her white beaded mini-dress and jacket ensemble, her long hair styled in a complicated cascade of curls and bling, trying to look like he was paying attention to the Vera Wang wedding dress that his eldest was asking his opinion about.

But truthfully, he wasn't seeing the young woman standing in front of him at all. In that moment, he was Mikhil Zolnerowich, kneeling beside the gurney upon which his sedated wife was laying, cradling the infant who stared up at him with unfocused eyes in that Buenos Aires hospital room.

" _You were so brave, my little angels," he murmured in Irish too low for anyone else to hear and then kissed them both on the forehead. "You are a fighter, like your mother; you will never give up."_

"Papa?"

"You are absolutely breath taking, Gabrielle," her mother cut in smoothly. "That's what's wrong with your papa. You've stunned him into silence."

"What she said," Miguel managed to answer without his voice breaking. Ever the spy, there was a part of his brain that registered the ridiculously snug garment that was hidden under his wife's sparkly jacket, but the vast majority of his head and heart were focused on the vision before him.

Gaby laughed lightly. It was rare she could catch her father off guard, but she had lived for those moments. But it was usually her demonstration of some firearm or martial art technique that did it.

The dress she'd worn other day when his daughter had married on the beach in front of the Maria Bonita Hotel had been a backless halter dress with a lace-down closure that barely moved in the ocean breeze. The skin tight, calf length silk gown, completed with white flowers in her short auburn hair, had been simple yet elegant. The entire wedding party had been decked out in white and off-white linen clothing appropriate for the conditions inherent with a wedding held between the sand and the surf in the early morning, much to Sra. Alvarez's tacit disapproval he suspected.

Today Gaby was wearing a gleaming white assemble of gossamer tulle over chiffon that left her shoulders and neck bare and reminded him of Russian winter snow glittering in the moonlight of nights long past. At her waist, around her neck and in the band that held her veil in place were shimmering deep blue sapphires intermingled with diamonds in shapes of butterflies and teardrops.

He struggled to form a coherent sentence, but ended up just giving her a watery smile, which probably pleased both of his fiery redheads more than anything he might venture to say. Sr. Cruz was still evaluating the difference between intel and experience ever since he had disembarked from the private plane at the Santos Dumont Aeroporto do Rio de Janeiro and been whisked away in a shiny black limo to the Windsor Guanabara Hotel, in which his host held an interest. Knowing that Paolo's family was wealthy and seeing it fully demonstrated were two _very_ different things.

So now he found himself standing in the alcove behind the altar of the Alvarez family church in Rio de Janerio attempting to keep his re-awakened super spy hypersensitivity and his "first time father of the bride" nerves under control whilst trying to wrap his mind around the fact that his eldest looked astonishing in a designer gown that cost more than the entire wedding and after party they had put together back in Conde. The spectacular Rocco finery of the Mosteiro de Sao Bento cathedral, for it was far too grand in his opinion to be thought of merely as a church, was distracting enough without the added emotions of seeing his little girl, who had loved playing hard and getting dirty most of her life, miraculously transformed into a bridal runway model bedecked in jewels.

Fernanda gave her daughter a quick hug and then shooed the brides maids out of the room, stopping only to give her husband a quick buss on his hirsute cheek as she exited through the heavy wooden door and left the pair of them alone.

"Oh, you cut your hair for me?" Gaby whispered, noticing that the blacker than usual locks were trimmed neatly above his collar and his salt and pepper beard was short shorn as well.

"Show of solidarity," he said with a smile, reaching out to touch the back of her neck below her hairline, leaning forward until their foreheads touched. "I am so…proud… of the woman you've become, Gabrielle, my indomitable little angel." His voice wavered with barely suppressed emotion.

The eldest sniffed and stopped herself from wiping her hand across her eyes. "You're going to make me ruin my makeup," she complained half-heartedly as she enveloped her father in a tight bear hug.

After several moments, Miguel shifted towards the door and extended his elbow to the bride to be. Looking down at her over his shoulder, his eyes bright with unshed tears, he queried, "Shall we?"

()()()()()()()

If walking his first born down the aisle of the superbly appointed Abadia De Nossa Senhora Do Monserrato Do Rj and handing her off to young Paolo Alvarez, who was beaming more brightly than the gold gild on the ornately carved wooden panels making up the interior, then watching them take their first dance in the elegant ballroom of his new in-laws' luxury hotel was a whole other level of mind blowing. It seemed that each passing year brought another milestone that he never thought he would achieve while he was running around the world with a gun in one hand and a satellite phone in the other. Life had been much kinder to Miguel Cruz than to Michael Westen.

The reception line had been long and tedious. But he had put on his best game face and he reminded himself that placating his in-laws for his daughter's sake was certainly as important as keeping weapons out of terrorists' hands. That thought brought a genuine smile to his face and he leaned over to kiss the cheek of the former guerrilla he'd met all those years ago while trying to do exactly that back in Ireland. That time and place had also been the first time the thought that there were people in this world who were at least as important as the mission had first crossed his brain.

Unfortunately for both of them, it took a while for that seed to take hold and grow. The dark haired man glanced over at his wife again, remembering the day she told him he'd be dead in ten seconds if he had to rely on his skills with relationships in order to survive. He almost laughed aloud, but that would not have ingratiated him to the assembled crowd who were there for the Alvarez's.

So it was that the ex-spy was actually happy when the dancing had commenced. He was an accomplished dancer; however, he rarely allowed that particular talent to be on display since he had left the service of his country as an undercover operative. Seeing petite Gabrielle enfolded in the embrace of her raven haired husband, Sr Cruz was momentarily back in that smoky bar in Belfast.

As the other members of the wedding party took to the floor, Miguel looked on with amusement as Maria Sousa, maiden of honor, found herself dancing with Paolo's best man and best friend from college while Carlos, one of the ushers, tried unsuccessfully to look comfortable twirling around the floor with Marisol Alvarez, one of the bridesmaids in his arms.

The older, wiser man felt nothing but sympathy for his nephew, who had somehow managed to find himself at the center of a love triangle between the two young women. Memories of being caught between his beloved, his mother and his ex-fiancée were not far from his mind as he watched the drama play out. Across the room which wasn't nearly as crowded as Sra. Alvarez would have liked, he spotted his friend in Brazilian intelligence who was there watching over his own offspring. With a nod towards Eduardo, Sr Cruz was relieved that Carlos hadn't made his way onto _his_ hit list too.

Then it was his turn to dance with his daughter while Fernanda took to the floor with Paolo. All the things he'd wanted to say to her before she'd become Sra. Gabrielle Alexandria Cruz-Alvarez got stuck in his throat and he really couldn't think of anything to add to what he'd already shared. So Miguel had squeezed his big girl tight at the end of the song, whispered how much he loved her close to her ear and then handed her over to the somewhat less capable hands of her father-in-law.

Sr Cruz heard his wife's musical laughter sound from behind him. Apparently, Paolo was busy beguiling Fernanda again. She genuinely liked the young man, which was fortunate for him. Little did the Brazilian know he had more to fear from the petite redhead in the flashy dress than from her husband. But Paolo seemed quite adept at dealing with both his favorite fiery women, a skill he had apparently perfected dealing with his own mother. Observing the adoration on the older woman's face towards her offspring reminded him of another needy but equally determined woman now gone.

So, while Sra Cruz was mingling with the Souzas and his in-laws were busy dancing with the young couple at the center of everyone's attention, he took the opportunity to use his spy skills and slip away virtually unnoticed. From the rooftop terrace of the hotel, there was a wonderful view out over the Guanabara Bay and various sights and lights that made up Rio de Janiero at night. He made a sweep of the tactical advantages of the position before allowing himself to just enjoy the scenery.

It helped him not be sad about the fact that his mother had not lived to see her first grandchild marry.

He tried concentrating on the fact that his mom would have been pleased with the match. Gaby's father-in-law approved of her whole heartedly. She was a tough minded, no nonsense entrepreneur, something Sr Alvarez admired, and she was no gold digger after the family funds. Her mother-in-law was somewhat less pleased that Paolo planned to live on the eco-farm in Conde. Miguel had to admit that he was relieved to add a son to the family rather than lose his daughter to faraway Rio.

There was no warning sound when his beloved appeared at his side. She had always been able to sneak up on him where no one else ever could. As he opened his arms to encompass the woman he loved, the melancholy man realized that his heart had always known he had nothing to fear from her.

"Are you alright, Miguel?"

"Just thinking…"

"Thinking about how much Marianna would have loved to have seen this?"

"That, too…" She knew him all too well. It made him smile even though his heart was alittle sore right at that particular moment. "Mostly I was thinking about that dingy little bar in Belfast."

Miguel drew her in for a tight embrace, holding her close and filling his senses with the smell of her, the feel of her, the warmth of her...

"Do you think anyone will notice if we danced the night away up here?" he asked, moving them slowly in a circle to the lilting music of another time and another place playing in his head.

"Let them notice," Fernanda declared.

He buried his face in her neck, her long auburn hair blowing gently around him in the light evening breeze. There were so many memories attached to holding her like this, some of them heart breaking. But since the spy had 'died' and the man inside had been allowed to live, he had found peace encircled in the arms of his wife, the mother of his children, his best friend and one true love.

()()()()()()()()

 **A/N** : _Again, we would like to say_ ** _thank you_** _everyone for your continued interest in this M-rated series and for your enthusiastic support of our efforts to keep the BURN going here on Fan Fiction. Thanks for all the reads, reviews, fav's and follows and we hope we've entertained you. We will repost "My Island in the Sun," Season Six AU in a week or so._


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